Our Michigan Native Plant Garden: You Can Do This Too
Take a Walk Through Our Gardens
It started with two caterpillars. In 2019 we adopted a pair of eastern black swallowtails, planted a little bronze fennel to feed them, and watched something shift in us. Standing over those striped creatures on a plant we had put in the ground for them, we understood, all at once, that a yard could be more than something to mow. It could be alive.
What grew from that single moment still amazes me. Our ordinary suburban lot now holds more than 60 native species and all the bees, birds, and butterflies that came searching for them. I've gathered it all into a little catalog called Prevatt Preserve, every garden on our property, from the prairie out by the street to the shade beds, the peony alley, and the backyard where a Norway maple once cast its shade. It's part plant list, part the story of how
a few good choices kept rippling outward.
And here is what I most want you to carry away: this is not out of reach. We began with no plan, no budget, and not the faintest idea what we were doing. Two caterpillars and one small bed, and the garden taught us everything after that. Your own yard is already full of that same possibility, waiting for the moment you decide to invite life in.
So come wander through ours. Let it be the spark. Somewhere out there a patch of earth is waiting for you to begin, and the creatures will find it faster than you can imagine.
Download the Prevatt Preserve Catalog ↓
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