History of the Garden

Teacher and botanist Eloise Butler, born in rural Maine and known for taking Minneapolis students botanizing in the bogs of Glenwood Park, founded the Garden out of a lifelong love of wild places and concern over the loss of native flora as the city grew. After the Minneapolis Board of Park Commissioners acquired the land in 1889, Butler and other botany teachers successfully petitioned for a natural botanic garden, and on April 27, 1907, the Wild Botanic Garden opened as three acres of bog, meadow, and hillside fenced in Glenwood Park. Butler envisioned it as a resource for schools, a destination for lovers of wild nature, and a place to study botanical problems firsthand, and she transplanted specimens from across Minnesota so visitors could see representatives of the state's flora in one location while preserving the land's natural character rather than arranging plants in formal, unnatural groupings. In 1911 she became the first curator, and over the next 20 years tens of thousands of native plants were added; the Garden expanded to 20 acres in 1912, was renamed the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in 1929, and that same year a tornado destroyed many tamaracks and changed the wetland's character. Butler completed Mallard Point in 1932 and died in the Garden of a heart attack in 1933 at age 81, after which Martha Crone became curator, added more than 42,000 plants during her tenure in the 1940s, and with Clinton Odell helped found the Friends of the Wild Flower Garden in 1952 after Odell donated funds in 1944 to add prairie while the northern wetland area was abandoned. Ken Avery became head gardener in 1959 upon Crone's retirement, prescribed burns were first used to manage the prairie in 1965, and in 1969 a Visitors Shelter funded by the Friends was built and named for Martha Crone. Almost 200 mature elm trees were lost to Dutch elm disease in 1977–79, causing many woodland wildflowers to die from over-exposure to sunlight; Garden Naturalists were added to the staff in 1984, Cary George became head gardener in 1987 as invasive species removal began, the prairie was expanded by one acre in 1994 bringing the Garden to 15 acres, Susan Wilkins became curator in 2004, ongoing work to remove invasive species and develop native and historic collections continued in 2005, and in 2007 the Garden marked its 100th anniversary.

Minneapolis, Minnesota · United States