Chapters in Michigan

Community watch party featuring renowned ecologist Doug Tallamy, who delivers an inspiring webinar on native species gardening and its vital role in supporting insects and birds. Learn about the Homegrown National Park movement. Discover practical ways to transform your landscape into a haven for local wildlife— a group discussion will follow the webinar to share ideas and questions with fellow native plant enthusiasts. 

No registration required. 

Our program speaker will be Marty Arnold, author, past River City Chapter president, and current Plant Sale Chair.  This presentation will cover several topics: weird and wonderful plant names and how they came to be; don't try this at home--confessions of a self-taught gardener; what weeds can tell you; oh, deer! when Bambi gets hungry; plan B exotics!;  why have a “PR garden”?; watch your back (and keeping it healthy); the best tools of the trade; what grew in your yard in 1826 (Natural Features Inventory); views from my soapbox; foraging.

Marty's book will be for sale at the event. (Cash/Check only)

Wild Ones River City will sell native plant and related books (Cash/Check/Credit Card).

In his attempt to provide an overview of his 30 years with Wild Ones and his own 93 years on earth, Tom Small, co-founder of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones, will first of all offer some of his many reasons for gratitude—for the people, for their vision, and for the land as teacher.
 

As Tom unfolds his understanding of what it means to “listen to the land,” he will focus on the quotation from Michel de Montaigne that he and his deceased wife Nancy (the other co-founder of KAWO) emblazoned on the 1999 leaflet advertising the new chapter: “Let us permit nature to have her way. She understands her business better than we do.”
 

Tom will discuss why it is important to learn the stories that the land tells us—the process that Robin Wall Kimmerer calls ”Restoryation.” As he looks forward to the future, Tom will speak about the need for Wild Ones to broaden and deepen the original, founding vision. He will touch on implications of the new science of plant intelligence, problems with the language that we use in our work, and all that we must now include and welcome as members of the full community.
 

Tom will touch on the importance to the native-plant community of such movements as Land Back, Rights of Nature, Territories of Life, and Robin Kimmerer’s “Plant, Baby, Plant.” He will suggest that the native-plant movement needs to take greater care to avoid and resist the insidious legacies of colonialism and enclosure of the commons.

In brief, Tom will offer his thoughts about some of the wonderful strengths of the native-plant movement and Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones as well as the uncertainties and challenges we face now and in the future.

Tom Small, WMU emeritus Professor of English Literature, has devoted his retirement to educating about the importance of native plants and natural landscaping. He is co-
founder of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones and co-author of Using Native Plants to Restore Community, now in its sixth printing. His recent essays include ”Regeneration: A Matter of Life and Breath,” “Soil: Begin with the Beginning,” “Mni Wiconi: Water Is Life,” and “The Practice of Satyagraha in a Time of Violence,” for Quaker Earthcare Witness, and “Gandhi’s Firm Grasp of Truth,” for the Mahatma Gandhi Centre for Peace Studies in New Delhi, India. He’s currently writing a long essay on “The Commons and Enclosure: Their Nature, History, and Future.”

Doors open at 6:00 for social time.

Kelly Konieczki and Wayne County Wild Ones is inviting the public to join in a workshop to participate in the 2026 City Nature Challenge! The City Nature Challenge is a global activity organized by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). This event is designed to get people out in nature, learning about and cataloging all they see in iNaturalist. 

Note: If you haven’t already, please create an iNaturalist account before the event by signing up here. 

The Wild Ones of Keweenaw Hospitality Committee invites all WOK members to a get together at Beviamo Vino (the wine bar) in Houghton on Saturday afternoon April 25th from 3:00 to 4:30. You can enjoy a drink, snack, or just talking about native plants with fellow native plant enthusiasts!