The woman behind a movement
September 9, 2025 marks Mary Lorraine “Lorrie” Otto’s 106th birthday.
Lorrie was more than a gardener. She was a mother, a neighbor, and a citizen who refused to look away when she saw the world around her changing. In the 1960s she noticed songbirds disappearing from her Milwaukee neighborhood. Their nests were empty, their calls missing from the morning air. The culprit, she discovered, was DDT, a pesticide sprayed widely across lawns and fields.
Lorrie didn’t stop at sadness. She gathered scientists, neighbors, and policymakers around her kitchen table, stacking her living room with research and evidence. Together, they built the case that led Wisconsin to become the first state to ban DDT in 1970! This was a landmark decision that led to a national ban just two years later.
From backyards to a national network
Even as she was shaping environmental history, Lorrie also opened her home. She invited neighbors, students, and strangers into her native plant garden, showing them that prairies and wildflowers could belong in city lots just as much as manicured lawns.
Those tours turned into potlucks, workshops, and friendships. In 1979, nine of those early neighbors formed the first Wild Ones chapter. They leaned on Lorrie as their teacher and inspiration, but she always insisted: anyone can do this, and everyone should.
Her gift was empowerment. She made ordinary people feel that their backyards mattered, that they too could be part of a revolution in how we live with the land.
A legacy of education
In 1996, the Wild Ones Board honored her life’s work by creating the Lorrie Otto Seeds for Education (SFE) Grant Program. Instead of just memorializing her, the program carried her passion directly into classrooms and communities.
Since then, Seeds for Education has provided more than $125,000 to schools and youth groups, planting over 350 nationwide. These grants have built butterfly gardens behind elementary schools, restored prairies on university campuses, and given thousands of students their first taste of native plant stewardship.
Now, Wild Ones is expanding our reach to engage youth through our national and chapter partnerships and the creation of new resources to support chapters with youth engagement.
“I always had the feeling that children ought to know what the plants are that they read about in poetry or in song or in their history books. I mean, something as simple as here we go round the mulberry bush — who knows what a mulberry bush looks like or a mulberry tree? So I thought, well, I’ll certainly have a mulberry tree in here. And then it was when I started to think of things that are under the spreading chestnut tree…”
– Lorrie Otto
Why her 106th birthday matters today
This year, on what would have been her 106th birthday, we’re honoring her vision the way she would have wanted — by putting more plants in the ground and more lessons in the hands of youth.
Help us raise $10,600, enough to fund one full year of Seeds for Education grants.
Join Us in Remembering Lorrie on Her 106th Birthday
Lorrie Otto never set out to create a national movement. She set out to care for her place, to protect the birds and plants she loved, and to teach others to do the same.
Today, nearly 50 years later, her spark has grown into a national network of Wild Ones chapters and a youth education program that keeps sowing seeds for future generations.
By celebrating her 106th birthday with a gift, you’re not just remembering her. You’re living her legacy.
Resources and further reading
Wild Ones Seeds for Education Program
Wild One Journal archive (Lorrie wrote a column for the Outside Story and later the journal into the 1990s)
Wild Ones history and Lorrie’s role in the organization’s founding
Background on the Wisconsin DDT ban and Lorrie’s organizing
