Midwest Home
April 2007

Dream Keeper

By Meleah Maynard

Imagine how you would feel if you were suddenly the keeper of someone else's dream, something they had nurtured, fussed over, and loved as deeply as humanly possible. Susan Wilkins knows exactly how that feels.

Three years ago, she became curator of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, a 15-acre paradise in Minneapolis' Theodore Wirth Park. Home to more than 500 species of plants—many of them planted by the garden's namesake—it is the oldest public wildflower garden in the country, celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

"When I'm working in the garden I'm always thinking of Eloise Butler," says Wilkins, a horticulture graduate of the University of Minnesota. "I think of her when I walk through the hemlock grove she planted by the back gate. I wonder how she would feel about the way I'm caring for the garden. Would she approve?"

Wilkins' attachment to the garden began long ago, with childhood trips to the wildflower sanctuary. Years later, by the spring of 1999, she was working as a naturalist for the Minneapolis Park Board, and later as a program aide. That is, until the curator position, which she refers to as her "dream job," came along.

In a way, nature has been gently drawing in Wilkins since she was a kid. Her love of the outdoors led her to pursue landscape architecture in school until the wildflower garden turned her focus to horticulture.

Like Butler, a high-school botany teacher who founded the garden in 1907 so her students would have a good place to study plants, Wilkins wants the garden to be a spot where greenery-deprived urbanites can learn about and experience nature. "It's amazing to me that we have a garden like this so close to downtown," Wilkins says.

The garden includes three ecosystems: an upland prairie, a wetland, and a woodland area. Wilkins does a lot of the hands-on work on the garden herself, ripping out invasive species like buckthorn, planting seedlings, and repairing stairways and paths. But unlike the curators who preceded her who tended to work alone, Wilkins is all about organizing volunteers. One of her most successful efforts involves training volunteers in how to remove native species and then turning them loose to care for a particular plot.

And though Butler often voiced her concerns about the public's affect on the garden—all those clumsy feet around all those delicate plants—Wilkins welcomes visitors. "I want everyone to have a chance to come here and connect with nature. I just hope Eloise would understand."

© Meleah Maynard