The Best Michigan Native Plants for Fall Color Fall Color Is More Than Flowers There is a moment in a Michigan garden when summer begins to loosen its hold. The days are still warm enough to spend outside, bees may still be moving among the last flowers, and a few late bloomers are doing their […]
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How to Create Spaces Where Wildlife Feels Safe Michigan Garden Article No. 48 A garden can be filled with native flowers and still feel surprisingly exposed. There may be nectar for butterflies, seeds for birds, and water nearby, yet wildlife visits only briefly. A chickadee drops onto a seed head and disappears. A butterfly pauses
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Why Morning Dew Is One of the Garden’s Greatest Gifts Nature Notes | No. 7 | Published Sep 10, 2026 There is a moment in the garden that belongs almost entirely to morning. Before the sun climbs high enough to warm the leaves, before bees begin moving steadily from flower to flower, and before the
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Learning How to Trust Your Native Garden When the Garden Stops Looking Like a Plan There comes a point in almost every native garden when the gardener begins to wonder whether something has gone wrong. A plant appears where you do not remember putting it. Another grows wider than expected. A once-visible patch of soil
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How to Create Garden Rooms with Native Plants Your Garden Doesn’t Have to Be Seen All at Once One of the most interesting gardens I know is not a garden you can understand from the driveway. You have to walk into it. A planting partially hides a bench. A path curves beyond a group of
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Why Fall Is One of the Best Times to Plant Michigan Native Plants Spring may receive most of the gardening attention, but it is not the only season for new beginnings. By early fall, the garden has already revealed a great deal. You can see where a plant disappeared, where neighboring plants never quite filled
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How to Plan for Your Fall Native Plantings By late summer, your garden is giving you information that was much harder to see in spring. You can tell which plants became larger than expected. You can see where the afternoon sun really falls. You know which areas stayed damp after rain and which dried quickly.
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How to Let Your Native Garden Fill in Naturally A newly planted native garden often asks something difficult of us. Patience. We plant young perennials, grasses, and shrubs with an image in our minds of the mature garden they will someday become. But in the beginning, there may be a lot of visible soil. Plants
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The Best Michigan Native Vines for Pollinators When we think about adding more native plants to a garden, we usually look down. Where is there room for another coneflower? Could we tuck in another grass? Is there space for one more shrub? But sometimes the most useful growing space in the garden is not beside
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Educational Series No. 6 | Publication Date August 25, 2026 How to Save Native Flower Seeds for Next Year There comes a point in late summer when the garden begins to change its language. The flowers are still there, but not all of them are blooming anymore. Some petals have fallen. Some stems are turning
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