Events

Pints & Native Plants is an informal meet-up that takes place on the third Thursday of each month. It’s a chance to have a drink together and chat about native plants, challenges in our gardens, pollinators, and more. Everyone is welcome–come by and get to know other native plant enthusiasts and KAWO members.

In this special collaboration, Robin Wall Kimmerer, author, botanist, and founder of Plant Baby Plant, joins youth leader and Nurture Natives founder Esther Bonney for an intergenerational conversation about belonging, reciprocity, and native plant action. 

Together, they will explore questions such as:

How do we create opportunities for young people to have a voice and feel empowered, even when they are not homeowners or decision makers?What kinds of relationships and mentorships help people stay engaged in native plant work over decades?Why do stories, shared practices, and community invitations matter just as much as plant lists?

Robin and Esther will reflect on what invites people into this work, what keeps them here, and what elders and youth have to teach each other.

Oak Savanna Garden Design: Going Beyond ‘Prairie Style’ Pollinator Gardens To Maximize Ecological Services in your Yard

View this program on our YouTube Channel!

View the handouts from this program:

Oak Savanna Design Tips

Oak Savanna Plant List

Oak Savanna systems are the perfect model for creating gardens that offer what entomologist Douglas Tallamy calls “hyper-productive keystone species,” which are essential to support the complex food webs in our own yards. Most urban and suburban yards have the conditions for Oak Savanna-style gardens, so why are prairies and forests the default model for native gardens? Mike Weis, native garden designer and advocate, will explore this question and discuss how to create an Oak Savanna.

Doors open at 6:00 for social time.

Our upcoming webinar with Basil Camu explores practical, evidence based ways to heal suburban and urban landscapes by working with trees, soil, and natural systems, drawing on real world practices from Leaf & Limb and community centered models for restoring life where we live, work, and play.!  

Pints & Native Plants is an informal meet-up that takes place on the third Thursday of each month. It’s a chance to have a drink together and chat about native plants, challenges in our gardens, pollinators, and more. Everyone is welcome–come by and get to know other native plant enthusiasts and KAWO members.

Rare species are considered a bellwether of ecosystem decline as they are more dependent on functioning intact ecosystems than common species. Understanding the conservation status of rare species at regional, national, and global scales requires current high-quality data. Michigan Natural Features Inventory manages the Michigan Natural Heritage Database that currently tracks the status of more than 344 rare animal species, 451 rare plant species, and high-quality examples of 80 natural communities. These data are used by stakeholders including state and federal agencies, utilities, and land trusts to assist in conservation planning. Tyler Bassett will examine changes to the list of plant species thought to be rare, from its genesis in the 1970s to the most recent update in 2023. Using case studies, he will illustrate how data is gathered and managed, how accuracy and quality is ensured, and how impactful high-quality data is for guiding conservation of rare species and the ecosystems in which they are embedded.

View this program on our YouTube Channel!

Join Joey Santore, creator of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t, for a candid Wild Ones National Webinar examining how inherited garden aesthetics shape native plant landscapes. Drawing on field experience and real ecology, Joey challenges tidy design norms and explores why dense, irregular plant communities are often the most resilient and ecologically sound.

Pints & Native Plants is an informal meet-up that takes place on the third Thursday of each month. It’s a chance to have a drink together and chat about native plants, challenges in our gardens, pollinators, and more. Everyone is welcome–come by and get to know other native plant enthusiasts and KAWO members.

Heather Ratliff presents: “Welcome, Little Sister: How Our Community Protected Twelve Acres of Woods Adjacent to Kleinstuck Preserve.”

Heather is a founding member of the Stewards of Kleinstuck, which was established in 2007 to care for Kleinstuck Preserve. She has been involved in local environmental efforts for over three decades, including the community campaign to purchase and protect Little Sister Preserve.

Professionally, Heather is a registered nurse and board-certified functional medicine practitioner in Kalamazoo, where she owns The Wellness RN Health Coaching. She is committed to strengthening the resilience and vitality of both people and natural spaces.

Doors open at 6:00 for social time.

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.

We’re hosting a special screening of The Extraordinary Caterpillar, a beautifully shot 60-minute documentary that reveals the vital—and often overlooked—role caterpillars play in our ecosystems.

Watch the trailer here! https://vimeo.com/1117213704

From blooming meadows to city parks and backyard gardens, this inspiring film celebrates the magic of nature while showing families practical ways to make a difference.

Along the way, you’ll see the groundbreaking work of The Caterpillar Lab, entomologist David Wagner, and Doug Tallamy, co-founder of Homegrown National Park.

Spencer High is an artist, place-based educator and owner of Querkus Creative. He specializes in helping conservation based non-profit organizations cultivate their communities and further the cultural ties that they have with the land around them. Join us as Spencer shares how the creation of a simple native plant garden in his backyard helped him rediscover the awe and wonder in his every day life.

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon! 

Details coming soon!