Joseph Hatch Joe enjoys vegetable gardening, beekeeping, and fiddling with stringed acoustic instruments, and especially reading and learning about nature. Joe is both an environmental advocate and Michigan master naturalist. A curious artist at heart, his love of nature builds the more he learns and explores the relationships, rhythms and patterns found in the plants and animals around us.
Kevin Cooper Kevin grew up in the Midwest, graduated from the University of Michigan in 2014, and now owns a small worker co-op building websites for NGOs. He lives in Ann Arbor with his partner and two small cats who walk on a leash and do tricks. Kevin also performs improv comedy with a local troupe.
Gina Neshewat Gina moved to Ypsilanti in 2019. Before then she spent most of her time in Ann Arbor, walking in its glorious parks and beyond, but never really thinking about how the ecology worked.
After moving to Ypsilanti she went from a 20×10 yard to over 2 acres, and that is when the adventure began. Initially just wanting to identify trees, she invited her friend Robb to walk through the woods with her. From there he explained which trees were which and much more. He eventually connected Gina to Billy when it was clear she was really into this work, and they became fast plant friends.
Since that first walk through the woods in Ypsilanti, Gina has never looked at nature the same and has become a strong supporter of native and local biodiversity.
Royal Oak
Ann E. Bueche Ann has appreciated plants and gardens for as long as she can remember. From childhood experiments with growing plants to tending houseplants and gardens throughout her life, her curiosity about plants has always been present.
Her deeper interest in native plants and ecological restoration began in 2015 after returning to Michigan from Colorado and noticing a sharp decline in bees and butterflies. Reading Bringing Nature Home by Doug Tallamy and learning from native plant advocates helped set her on a path toward habitat gardening and ecological restoration.
Ann serves on the Planning Commission and the Sustainability and Climate Action Task Force for the City of Royal Oak. She is also an independent consultant specializing in program design, training, outreach and strategy.
Grosse Pointe Park
Kelly Konieczki Kelly is an outdoor educator who is passionate about pollinators and environmental stewardship. She enjoys helping people of all ages get involved in community science and tune into the relationships that exist within the natural world. Kelly is excited to help create pollinator pathways in her community and looks forward to connecting with others who want to support pollinators and habitat.
What makes native food forest special? By William Kirst, Executive Director
One of the truly amazing aspects of living in the southern lower peninsula of Michigan is our surprisingly diverse and beautiful ecosystems. Within rather short stretches one can go from dry, sandy, sparsely-treed oak barrens to lush and verdant sedge dominated fens, from beech and sugar maple forests with stunning displays of spring ephemeral wildflower to conifer swamp dominated by white cedar. Among these ecosystem types reside two that are especially pertinent to the topic of food forests: oak savannas and oak-hickory woodlands.
This massive white oak was likely part of an extensive savanna food forest. It could be again.
In many ways you could consider these the original food forests of the Great Lakes region. The importance of the food that comes from the two dominant species here, oaks and hickories, can not be overstated. The fruit of each species, acorns and nuts, respectively, were primary sources of nutrition for indigenous peoples. Acorns were ground into a flour and eaten as a porridge or bread and hickory nuts were boiled into a sweet and fatty milk, among many other uses for both.
Common violets… a common source of leafy greens and delicious little flowers.
Black Raspberries are the easiest to grow of our native berries. You should definitely have a patch growing somewhere near you if you don’t currently. They’re delicious, nutritious, beautiful, fairly magical and mostly not as thorny as roses…
That’s just two tree genuses. There are so many more. How about Tilia leaves, Juneberries, Hazelnuts, Currants, Raspberries, Blueberries, Paw Paw among other woody species? How about Alliums, Tradescantia, Groundnuts, Sunchokes, Violets, Milkweeds, Cattails? SO MUCH FOOD.
Now all that food, while being clearly delicious for us, is also delicious to so many other animals. And guess what? Yup, you know it. Those animals are the MOST nutritious foods from the food forest. Deer, Bear, Moose, Bison (seriously, Bison used to live in Michigan), Beavers and Rabbits, Geese, Duck, Turkey, Swans, Turtles and Fish for days. The ecosystems were simply so incredibly productive that food was literally all around.
Deer. A great source of protein in the Oak Savanna.
The communities living here cultivated what the colonists saw as ‘wild’ land, saving and selecting for the most productive trees and the bushes with the sweetest fruits. In doing so, they also cultivated the abundance of animals around them. Are deer a problem in your garden? Maybe it’s time to consider them a nutritious part of your garden…
So the thing that makes native food forests so special is that they simply ARE our forests. They provide for all of life, not just human. Thus, they fully support us, mind, body and soul. Mind as we learn the other beings around us and how they work. Body as their giving of their lives supports our living. And Soul as we connect through our Mind and Body to every other living being around us.
Late winter is a quiet, spacious time — perfect for dreaming about the growing season ahead. As you enjoy these slower days, begin imagining spring color, buzzing pollinators, and the way your garden will feel in the sun.
This is a great moment to sketch out ideas, explore our Garden Layout resources, start a few seeds indoors, and envision how you want your space to grow. A little planning now brings confidence (and beauty) when the warmer days arrive.
What’s an invasive species? How about an ‘adventive’ plant? Native…to where? We’ll get into the weeds, figuratively and thematically, and then round out the evening with resources and ways to get involved. Some species we may touch on include: Celastrus orbiculatus (bittersweet), Phragmites australis, and our old favorites, Rhamnus cathartica (buckthorn) & Lonicera species (honeysuckles).
Where: ICC Ed Center 1522 Hill St, Ann Arbor, MI, 48104
What’s an invasive species? How about an ‘adventive’ plant? Native…to where? We’ll get into the weeds, figuratively and thematically, and then round out the evening with resources and ways to get involved. Some species we may touch on include: Celastrus orbiculatus (bittersweet), Phragmites australis, and our old favorites, Rhamnus cathartica (buckthorn) & Lonicera species (honeysuckles).
Accessibility: RSV, flu and COVID are running rampant, so masking is recommended (masks will be available).
Parking is available on side streets. The first floor of the Ed Center is handicap accessible but has 3 carpeted stairs to the living room. The upstairs of the Ed Center is accessible only by stairs. Feel free to reach out to info@adaptecology.org for more details or if you have questions. Zoom link may be be available if there is enough interest.
If you received a service in 2025, we kindly ask that you wait until 2027 to submit another request. Thank you for understanding — this helps us connect more people to native plants and expand our reach.
One of the three pillars of our mission at Adapt is to plant native and perennial edible gardens, for free, for those who would like to begin the process of healing their land but may not have the expertise, time, or funds to see a project through.
Thanks to our growing and generous community of supporters, we have funding this year to offer over 200 fifty square foot micro-meadow gardens and kits in our Adapt communities. Our hope is that these small, easily understood and fun to care for plantings will create and connect native habitat, increase local food resiliency, and provide fertile ground for a growing restoration of our relationship to the land.
Please share this with anyone you know who would be interested.
You can request a free garden, consultation or garden kit on our homepage. The volunteer leader of your region will contact you to set up a time to discuss details.
Please consider becoming a supporter so that we may continue to offer our services to more people in more communities. It’s EASY PEASY and you’ll sleep well at night knowing your dollars are going toward building native plant gardens and a culture of ecological wisdom.
We believe that each of us, and each plot of land, is vital to a healthy future. Adapt exists to sustain and promote the connections between people and the land that supports us through community co-creation of native plant and perennial food landscapes.
Through crowdfunding, education and volunteer effort, we aim to build a community network that supports the restoration of native plant and perennial food landscapes on small parcels of privately- and publicly-owned land where there might otherwise not be the resources to do so.
Selling a home and moving is one of the most stressful life events that we do to ourselves. When we’ve put our efforts into creating a beautiful, life-giving native landscape, the emotional burden can often be too much to bear. Our fears of destruction begin to obscure what our landscape ultimately gives us – a deep, abiding connection with all that other living beings with whom we share our piece of this Earth.
It’s crucially important that we remember that the future home owners are also among those living beings! With deep breaths and a resolute dedication to share our knowledge and experience, we can create the conditions for the future home owners to connect with us and the landscape that we have fostered into existence.
I know this from my own experience. In 2020 we sold our home of 11 years for an adventure of a lifetime (more on that at a future date). It was imperative to us that we found buyers who would continue the work that we started.
*first a caveat* I would not recommend planting your front yard the way we did. For most people in most places, what you see above is absolutely not appropriate, especially so close to a sidewalk. We, however, live in Ann Arbor AND in a neighborhood that celebrates this level of botanical fecundity. This was appropriate for us because we could get away with it and no one would bat an eye.
Our landscape started with only a few native plant species that were hiding in an unkempt corner of the yard. By the time we left there we at least 112 native and perennial edible plant species.
These plants supported countless insect species. Bird and mammals found shelter and food. We found delight and connection.
This was a LOT to communicate to say the least.
The first thing I did was to compile a list of all the species that I knew to be on the land. This gave me a wonderful opportunity to reflect on all the work that we had done over the years. Each species added represented a distinct moment in our lives and memories of the work came flooding back. It also gave me the opportunity to reflect on all those experiments that didn’t work. (I like to tell people who think they can’t grow plants that I’ve likely killed more plants than they have tried to grow. Thus my thumb appears green.)
The next step was to create a simple map of what I considered to be the most important plants on the property. These are the plants that I feel provide the most ecological impact, are easiest to manage, look the best and should absolutely remain no matter what. Most of these were woodies species, but as you can see below I also included the rain gardens and black raspberries.
Making a map of your property will give the future home owners the ability to make sense of the garden. Your map should primarily reflect your values. Your values can then be tempered with reflection as to what a future home owner can reasonably be expected to understand. Remember, people are smarter and more interested than you give them credit for! People naturally care and want to do good! Allow them to!
Then I made another map that simply showed the different beds. I wasn’t going to burden them (or myself) with trying to map out individual or groups of plants. After 11 years and most of it started from seed there was no way that would make any sense. But this map below at least gives a sense to the prospective buyer how much of their future property is in garden. This would be especially important if they are buying in the late fall through early spring when all the plants are keeping themselves warm underground!
This leads then to the hard part – creating a coherent narrative that prospective buyers will find appealing. Keep in my that you are selling your house, not just your landscape! You want to give the buyers the feeling that they CAN take care of it, they will ENJOY taking care of it, and that it fits in with the culture of their new home. Give as much concise and coherent detail as you can. Your narrative will be longer the more garden elements you have in your landscape. We had veggies, herbs, raingardens, fruit trees, fruit shrubs, flower beds, wild areas, etc. There was a lot to talk about!
Below is the letter we wrote. This was included in the description of our home.
“Maps have been provided to show a broad view of the vegetation. We would be happy to make more detailed maps if the buyers are interested.
The City of Ann Arbor encourages homeowners to landscape with native plants in order to conserve and restore biodiversity (especially insect pollinators), mitigate climate change and reduce stormwater pollution. The city does not have any height or setback limitations for well-designed and cared for native landscapes except for preserving sight lines. This landscape conforms to the city’s code.
This mostly native landscape requires very little in terms of maintenance, The main task will be cutting back vegetation that is encroaching on the sidewalks. This can take place once or twice depending upon the home owners comfort level, once in mid June and again in early September. We have used garden shears to take the vegetation down to 18 inches in a foot wide buffer along the sidewalks. This takes about 30 minutes.
The second task is weeding out any invasive plants that may be trying to sneak in. The main worries are non-native shrubs like common buckthorn and honeysuckle, as well as herbaceous plants like garlic mustard and dames rocket. They can all easily be pulled out of the ground as seedings. We will provide photos for identification and a “how to” guide if the buyers would like.
Stems and leaves can be left for the winter where they provide visual interest and habitat for over-wintering pollinator species as well as enriching the soil and creating a natural mulch. Stems can be cut to 18 inches in early May or removed and composted or turned into mulch.
The native gardens flower from early April through early November. In addition to the ever-changing floral and vegetative display, the garden delights with fragrances from the American plum in the spring to the switchgrass in the late summer. Birds nest regularly here and have a buffet of caterpillars (who only eat native plants) to feed their young. Butterflies are found throughout the growing season but reach their peak in August. You’ll find dragonflies darting around every corner.
In addition the birds and bees, this garden does attract toads and mammals. If you want to grow veggies, make sure you keep your fence sturdy.
Strawberry Patch
The strawberry patch will reward you handsomely for any effort you put into it. Fertilize in the spring, eat DELICIOUS berries in the summer, and prune the runners in the fall. We will include a guide to taking care of strawberries if wanted
Raspberries
Cultivated red raspberry are growing in the front yard along the vegetable garden. Their maintenance involves removing dead stems (having only three stems for every 18×18” square of land), winter pruning to 4 feet tall, and eating tons of raspberries for 6 to 8 weeks in the summer. Pull out raspberries that are sneaking out of their patch in the spring and summer.
Wild black raspberries grow in the back yard. They don’t necessarily need any maintenance, but they will produce a lot more fruit if they are occasionally pruned. (This will also keep them from expanding their boundaries)
Vegetable gardens
We will have them covered in straw. They received a heavy amendment of compost in the spring of 2020.
Perennial edibles
There are quite a few edible perennials around the landscape from herbs to berries to perennial greens and even an almond tree! All of these are listed in the species list. We will be happy to help you identify and get to know these plants if you are interested. Some of the edible perennials include: rhubarb, scorzonera, sea kale, chokeberry, juneberry, hardy almond, elderberry, spiderwort, asparagus, and sunchokes. The landscape has been a blessing to build and to grow along side. Having a place right outside the front door, in a city, that children can go to catch toads, chase butterflies and climb a cherry tree while grazing on the fruit, has been very rewarding. Please do not hesitate to reach out at any point and ask any questions you may have. We are happy to help in whatever”
I think the most important thing we put in this letter was that we were willing to continue helping the future buyer. Knowing that you have support feels good, right?! OFFER YOUR ASSISTANCE in whatever way you can.
Ultimately we ended up finding the PERFECT couple to purchase our home. I am continually delighted to see that the landscape we started is continuing to thrive and expand.
As we’re not able to put links in our videos yet, I figured I could put the design up here. But first, the video!
This garden is 20 feet wide by 140 feet long. It’s a big boi! Most importantly though, this garden would not be possible without the removal of some pretty massive Norway Maples. What did it look like with all those maples you ask?
You can’t possibly plant a decent native plant garden under that. Ughhhhhh. You just gotta get ride of them. It’s Ok!
When you do get rid of them, you can plant this!
Looking for design or installation help? Send us a message and we’ll help turn your garden fantasies into reality.
WHO WANTS A GARDEN?! 
