Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary (2024)

Annual Patron Parking Permit: Enjoy parking privileges in specially designated spaces at some ofour most popular regional parks.Viewparking permitdetails.

The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden is not available for rentals.

As demand for the expansion of Glenwood Park grew, a new development gave the park one of itssignature features, a unique wildflower garden that is cherished still. In early 1907 Eloise Butler, JohnGreer and others petitioned the park board for space in Glenwood Park to establish a botanical garden.The park board granted the request and set aside three acres of bog, meadow and hillside for the WildBotanical Garden, the first public wildflower garden in the United States. The board also allocated amodest sum for paths and fencing of the area and on April 27, 1907 announced that the garden hadopened.

The person who took charge of the garden as a volunteer was a retired botany teacher, Eloise Butler,who for years had taken her students to the park for botany lessons. Butler tended the garden for fouryears as a volunteer until in 1911 the Minneapolis Womans Club petitioned the park board to appoint afull-time curator for the garden. The club offered to pay half a year’s salary for a curator. When thatwasn’t enough to get the park board to act, the club increased the offer to a full year’s salary if the parkboard would retain the position and pay the salary after that. The park board agreed. The person the Womans Club recommended to be the curator was Eloise Butler.

Eloise Butler created such a magnificent wild garden—collecting, protecting, preserving andcataloguing wild plants and offering free botany classes—that the park board named the garden in herhonor in 1929. In 1933, at the age of 81, she died on her way to work. Her ashes were spread in hergarden and the park board held a memorial service and planted a pin oak tree in the garden in her honor,noting that “Every plant in her garden was her living child, upon whom she bestowed her devotion andcare.”

Butler was succeeded by her assistant, Martha Crone, who remained in charge of the garden until 1959.Upon Crone’s retirement, she was succeeded by Ken Avery. The shelter in the garden is named forCrone and the terrace is named for Avery.An important addition to the park occurred in 1944, when Clinton O’Dell, a successful Minneapolisbusinessman—he created the Burma Shave rhymes seen along highways — and former botany studentof Eloise Butler, contributed $3,000 to expand the garden to include ground for upland or prairievarieties of plants, rather than the primarily woodland plants that Butler’s original garden couldaccommodate. O’Dell also helped form in 1951 The Friends of the Wild Flower Garden, which hascontributed time and money for the maintenance and improvement of the garden ever since.

History through 2008 written by David C. Smith, with updates from 2009 to present written by MPRB.

Historical Timeline

August 3, 1851: Eloise Butler is born on a farm near Appleton, Maine.Growing up roaming the woods, meadows and bogs, she pursues a careeras a botany teacher.

1874: Eloise moves to Minneapolis and teaches school for 36 years, taking her students “botanizing” inthe bogs of what is now Wirth Park. She also takes course work at Harvard University, Woods Hole andthe University of Minnesota, and field work in Jamaica and Vancouver Island, BC.

1907: Eloise and other botany teachers successfully petition the Minneapolis Park Board to create anatural botanic garden to preserve native flora as the city grew. Three acres of bog, meadow and hillsideare properly fenced and the Wild Botanic Garden opened April 27, 1907.

1911: Eloise retires from teaching and is officially appointed garden curator; for the first time she is paidfor her gardening labor.

1924: The garden expands thanks to her persistence, spending $700 of her own money to fence five acresthat need protecting. She adds to garden’s collection by moving plants from natural areas in Minneapolisand greater Minnesota, and importing from the East Coast. Calling herself a “Wild Gardener,” she seesher wild plant hunting as great adventure.

1927: The garden is re-named Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden in her honor.

1933: Eloise Butler dies while working in the garden at age 81. Martha Crone, volunteer and friend,succeeds her as garden curator. She goes on to rescue plants from impending development. The gardenexpands and the upland prairie garden is created.

1952: Friends of the Wild Flower Garden Inc. is founded by Clinton Odell to support garden projects.

1959: Martha retires (she dies in 1989 at age 92). Ken Avery is designated head gardener. He adds plantsnative to Minnesota and is the first to use controlled burns to manage upland prairie.

1970s: Dutch Elm Disease and drought take their toll on shade-giving elms. As a result the gardenbecomes sunnier, the bog drier and wildflowers suffer. Replanting of trees and replacing wildflowers hasbeen ongoing since the late 1970s.

1987: Ken retires and is succeeded by Cary George. He removes invasive species, installs trail signs,laminated maps and wooden station posts. The garden is expanded by one acre and native wildflowerspecies are added. He maintains the garden’s historical context by adding and nurturing plant species thatonce flourished there, such as Tamarack.

2004: Susan Wilkins succeeds Cary George who retired in 2003. As garden curator, Susan developsvolunteer programs to battle invasive species, expands adult and youth educational opportunities inGarden, and plants thousands of native plants annually. Susan co-facilitated the development of theGarden’s first Management Plan, adopted in 2010.

2015: The first section of a new boardwalk winding through the garden’s wetlands opens. The boardwalk’s decking was made from ash trees harvested as part of the MPRB Forestry Department’s Emerald Ash Borer Preparedness Program. The boardwalk bridge looking toward Mallard Pond is dedicated to Cary George.