“Let the seeds fall where they may”

My love of seeds started in my Prairie Grandma’s attic. It was hot from the cookstove below and very welcoming. The seeds she had collected were in pill bottles, match boxes, paper bags and old-fashioned tin spice cans. What a treasure trove for a child to explore. Every fall she collected all the seeds she could for next year’s crop. Not just vegetables, but so many flowers.

Little steps: At the University of Saskatchewan Master Gardener program, I remember an instructor saying to make a natural spot in your yard for the little critters and insects. Pile up old sticks, leaves, stalks, dead wood. That was the start of my own “wilding” in my yard. This little pile became a refuge for little critters, those welcome contributors to the life cycle of nature.

I have let every native tree and bush grow in my yard. I have moved a few, but the red osier dogwoods, willows and aspens and now a burr oak are the host plants for many species of insects including my beloved butterflies.

The more I learned about butterflies, the more I wanted to make my yard into a pollinator delight. The more time I spent in the desert of Arizona as a volunteer at the Desert Botanical Garden, the more I realized that water is a scarce commodity and we should be treating it with reverence. Prairie native seeds, once established, do not require any water except rain. I don’t want to be tied to my yard because we must mow and water. Prairie seeds are specific to our region. They grow deep roots and love to blow in the wind.

Native seeds can take two to three years to establish and are unpredictable in both growth and placement as well as the location where they land the following year. Some years they grow and some they don’t. You can’t line them up like perfect little soldiers like you would do with geraniums. 

I have been a Butterflyway Ranger with the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF) and the Butterflyway Project for over five years. In that time, DSF has provided amazing Zoom sessions on native butterflies and native plants that support our pollinators. I have been a part of iNaturalist with the Desert Botanical Garden and when DSF expanded the BIMBY (Butterflies in My Backyard) project from British Columbia to all of Canada I enthusiastically joined. Now BIMBY provides Zoom courses and speakers as well as for the Butterflyway Rangers program.

My green lawn in my front yard has been replaced with boulders and native plants such as ferns, milkweed, Liatris, Heuchera and columbine and native prairie seeds such as fleabane, asters and prairie yellow coneflower. I have not been successful  growing purple prairie clover, blanket flower or Echinacea. My composting husband has made the soil too rich for these plants.

I have included non-native lilacs and caragana at our cabin at Wakaw Lake and intend to keep these, because every butterfly I have ever seen makes a stop at these bushes. They are hardy to the Prairies where lows reach -45°C and bloom in June.

I had to mulch my front yard the first year as I couldn’t complete all the planting in one year. I learned that if you want the wildflowers to spread you must pull back the mulch and expose the soil. Let the seeds fall where they may. I use a system of colour, blooming time and height so there is always nectar for the butterflies from spring to fall. In the spring it is purple columbine, yellow alexandria, Heuchera (coral bells), Heuchera (pale yellow), trumpet vine (orange), prairie coneflower (yellow), bergamot (pink), anise hyssop (blue), non-native Echinacea, blanket flower, showy milkweed, swamp milkweed (pink) and goldenrod (yellow) for migrating butterflies in the fall.

In Saskatoon we are the northern extreme for swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata. My efforts to grow it from seed are unpredictable and I will lose at least 50 percent over winter, including established plants. Previously we were told to plant milkweed. Now the experts say to plant 10 or more plants and plant multiple native varieties of the same plant. Monarch butterflies will only lay their eggs on milkweed. Therefore, milkweed is the host plant for monarch larvae. Butterflies may nectar at multiple plants, but some species only lay their eggs on specific native plants.

I am not a speech maker, so I thought, how can I spread the word about pollinators and native plants? I saw a 30-pack of native seeds for sale online at the Blazing Star Wildflower Seed Company and thought I could get 90 packs for our tenants in our office building and that every year I would have the company put the most common native Saskatchewan butterflies on the seed package and the most common native seeds inside. It is a mix of seeds native to our region. In 2024 we had the Canadian tiger swallowtail and in 2025 we had the mourning cloak.

Circle flowers – start small – I bought a florist/dreamcatcher metal circle and removed the grass in this 18-inch circle in my yard and planted my native seeds sourced from Blazing Star. Plant in late May, water for 10 days and the seeds start  popping up. The seed packets contain giant hyssop, dotted blazing star, smooth aster, bergamot and northern evening primrose. The seeds are different every year depending on what flowers produced seeds that year. Diversity is the key to going wild.

The Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan (NPSS) gives its members leftover plants every June and provides field trips and courses. The treasures I have received from NPSS that have survived include swamp milkweed, stiff goldenrod and heart-leaf golden alexandria.   

Next steps will be to establish a seed library on my street, distribute seeds to my neighbours and tell more folks about native plants. We’re also rewilding our lake lots at Wakaw Lake and advising the municipality of road allowance protection for native plants. I am going to help save the planet, one seed at a time.