Summer Stroll at Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden

"Let Nature Be Your Teacher"

One of two entrances into the Garden, the south entrance is the most widely used. The gate, stone pillars and original pergola were paid for by the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden in the 1990s. The William Wordsworth “let nature be your teacher” quote hanging on a sign from the pergola is from his poem titled, The Tables Turned.

As you pass through the entrance gate to the Wildflower Garden, see if you feel anything change. Many visitors notice how the city fades away when they walk through the gates and their senses start to open up.

Woodland Wonderland

Starting your walk through the Wildflower Garden, take a left down the switchback trail. As you walk under a canopy of mature oak trees (estimated to be over 100 years old), listen for bird song, notice the dappled light, and look for the fuzzy fruits of woodland poppy and the tiny, bright red fruits of red elderberry. Can you smell the fragrant, mossy scent of a mid-summer forest?

Turning the Corner (1/2)

At the bottom of the switchback trail, take another left as you pass by the Martha Crone Visitor Shelter (on your right, currently closed). Have you ever seen a hillside awash in ferns? 

Turning the Corner (2/2)

As you near the bottom of the hill look to your left. From all accounts this hillside of interrupted ferns has looked like this since the Garden opened 114 years ago. Rarely are invasive plants, like buckthorn and garlic mustard, found growing amongst these ferns- any guesses as to why?

The Forest Stroll (1/6)

The Wildflower Garden is known for its extensive collection of spring-flowering woodland wildflowers. Many of the most popular wildflower species growing at the Garden were not indigenous to the site, but rather introduced by Eloise Butler in the first twenty-five years of the Garden’s development.

The Forest Stroll (2/6)

Several of the introduced spring-flowering standouts include the ubiquitous white trout lily, wild ginger, Virginia bluebell, skunk cabbage, cut-leaved toothwort, and two-leaved toothwort species. All nine of the treasured trillium species growing here, save for the nodding trillium, were introduced to the Garden’s plant collection by Eloise Butler.

Image features a white trout lily.

The Forest Stroll (3/6)

In summer, the fruits of spring’s blossoms are tucked away along the trails and treetops. Inside each unique fruit are the seeds that a given plant species works diligently to produce. The fruit is made to nourish and protect the seeds inside and sometimes to help the seeds move to a new location, as well.

Image: Red Baneberry (unripe)

The Forest Stroll (4/6)

A fruit can vary in appearance from papery like a bladdernut fruit- to hard and round like a walnut fruit.

Image: Bladdernut fruits

The Forest Stroll (5/6)

Elderberries and cherries have small red fruits that match what many of us think of when we imagine a fruit.

Image: Red Elderberry fruit

The Forest Stroll (6/6)

See if you can find three different types of fruit along Geranium Path on your way to the wetland garden.

Image: The Geranium Path in May.

An Elevated View (1/2)

Entering onto the Wildflower Garden’s boardwalk, notice how the view changes slightly as you rise up above the layers of wetland plants. This beautifully designed boardwalk uses thermally modified ash lumber for the decking, some of which was harvested and milled from Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board (MPRB) land as part of emerald ash borer management. With the generous support of the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, this project came to fruition in 2015 and was completed in 2019.

An Elevated View (2/2)

Take a seat on one of the two boardwalk benches to gather views and perspective. Look and listen for songbirds perched on nearby standing snags and raptors overhead. This is a popular location for birding in the Garden.

The Heart of the Garden

Eloise Butler selected this location for the “Wild Botanic Garden” in large part because of the tamarack bog that was here, stating that, “A particular reason for selecting this place was the undrained tamarack swamp, such a swamp being the abode of most of our orchids and insectivorous plants so interesting in habit and structure. Indeed, most lovers of wild plants are bog trotters and find in the depths of a swamp an earthly paradise.”

Although the wetland has changed considerably over the years, and no longer are there mossy hummocks filled with tiny insect-eating sundews and seas of starflowers, native showy lady slippers still thrive, as do tamaracks, which are planted regularly.

Up, Up and Away (1/2)

Leaving the boardwalk, step down and veer left and left again. Walking along Violet Way trail, enjoy a final meander along this woodland trail named for the plentiful violets growing along the hillside. Once carpeted in invasive buckthorn and garlic mustard, the re-imagining of this woodland hillside has come a long way. Extensive invasive species removal has occurred and large numbers of native woodland wildflowers, sedges, ferns, trees, and shrubs have been planted here, since 2005, to revitalize this garden area.

Image: Canada Violet on Violet Way Trail

Up, Up, and Away (2/2)

After walking along Violet Way trail, go right. Before you begin your ascent up Hemlock Hill trail, look up to notice the majestic evergreens planted by Eloise Butler a century ago. Found growing in only a few locations in northern Minnesota, eastern hemlocks are more common further east.

The hemlock trees growing at the Garden provide an opportunity for visitors and students to learn about this interesting species without having to travel hours to see one. As a public garden created for the study and enjoyment of native plants, this is just as Eloise Butler intended.

On a hot day, a pause under this hemlock grove restores and refreshes. Take a minute to breathe in the spicy scent of the trees.

Into the Upland Garden (1/3)

This curated oak savannah-like landscape changes dramatically throughout the season. This area of the Garden was developed in the 1940s under the direction of Martha Crone, Eloise Butler’s successor and the Garden’s second curator. She saw the value in incorporating a sunnier, upland space into the Garden to provide the right conditions for a new collection of plants.

A lot of hard work went into creating this space over 75 years ago, including the removal of woody shrubs and trees and large-scale plantings. The work to keep the upland garden spatially open and full of a diversity of well-suited plant species continues to this day.

Into the Upland Garden (2/3)

In the summer months look for a progression of sunflowers, asters, coneflowers, and goldenrods. By August, the upland garden is a riot of color. For fun, note the number of colors you see and the variety of hues-it might just make a rainbow.

Into the Upland Garden (3/3)

And take note of all the buzz around you as make your way through. With the significant plant diversity cultivated within these 15-acres, pollinators abound.

In 2013 and 2014, two entomologists from the University of Minnesota studied the bees of the Garden and identified 104 bee species, 101 of which were native to Minnesota. The bee diversity found at the Garden represents about 20% of the known bee species in the entire state of Minnesota. If you were looking for some inspiration, imagine that. Think of what a city, a county, or a country full of Wildflower Gardens could do to support the ever more fragile web of life that we belong to.