Grand Rounds Scenic Byway
Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, MN

Schoolteacher Eloise Butler feared the wild beauty of Minnesota would fall to the ax of city life as surely as her beloved Maine woods had, and she set about to save it. As a result, in 1907 the Minneapolis Park Board created a three-acre preserve for native flora, an immense wild garden that Butler tended all her life. Located in Theodore Wirth Park, the preserve (which has grown to nearly 15-acres) offers representative plantings of Minnesota's major habitats - deciduous forest, wetlands and upland prairie - and blooms spring to fall.