Biggest Native Plant Expo yet!

June 20, 2025

Native Plant Sale - Volunteers and attendees at Milkweed Giveaway table

2025: New challenges, great success

Organizing the Native Plant Expo & Marketplace, at the scale the event has reached, has its many challenges. Each year we try to expand awareness to drive engagement in local conservation efforts. It can be challenging to capture the attention of community members amid an often noisy and chaotic world, but we are proud to see growing interest and support. In 2021, we did our best but flopped with low attendance due to a ticket system intended to moderate crowd size during COVID. In 2022, months before the event, we got double-booked at our venue and switched to the Chelsea Fairgrounds, which had its benefits! In 2024, we faced staff turn-over and our team had to re-delegate to keep event operations smooth.

And this year was no different, with a host of new challenges: federal funding headaches, wildfire smoke challenging public health, multiple key staff members transitioning to other career paths, and an increasing number of other native plant sales preceding the event (good problem!). It is always a gamble and labor of love for us to organize this event, and hedge our bets on bringing together over 15 native plant nurseries to provide a unique shopping and learning opportunity to our community in Washtenaw and the greater southeastern Michigan region. 

The hard work and persistence continues to pay off as the community came out strong, with over 2,486 attendees choosing to spend their day learning and investing in native landscapes, exceeding our previous max of 2250. This included a record breaking 531 Early Bird ticket sales to folks who wanted first access from 8am-9am, before the event opened for free at 9am. 

See the Photos on Facebook!

Thanks to Monjoa of Fako Media for the expert photography!

Last call for the popular 2025 Expo t-shirts:
"Keep your friends close, and your anemones closer." 

A few limited edition shirts are available until we sell out! 

Spring Native Plant Pre-Sale

Volunteers at the Spring Native Plant Sale distribution

Amazing Volunteers having a good time at the Spring Native Plant Sale distribution!

Every spring we offer the Native Plant Sale pre-order distribution for those green thumbs and Master Rain Gardeners who want to pre-order for their garden designs. We host a few plant distributions per year, and the spring is our largest selection of native plants offered by pre-order. We offer species in plug flats, quart pots, and some larger gallon pots from Designs By Nature nursery and WildType nursery. Over 173 orders were distributed, totaling to over 6,887 plants! This sale allows for our county's gardeners to order ahead for a successful, planned garden, while also generating revenue to support the event and many staff hours required.

Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter or check our events page for information on the upcoming annual plant distributions.

Nurseries, Vendors, & Exhibitors

Attendees browsing nursery's plants sales

Some highlights from vendor survey responses since the event:

  • "The easy flow and signage. I honestly wouldn't change a thing. You all have this running like a well oiled machine as far as I'm concerned. Great job." - Vendor survey response
  • "Set-up went smoothly, we talked to lots of people and had great conversations about native plants, rain gardens, and how to use those to protect the river."  - Vendor Survey response

The Expo & Marketplace barns hosted 42 vendors & exhibitors, up from 38 in 2024!  This included 15 different native-plant-focused nurseries, as well as local nonprofits and government programs focused on native plants and conservation, and local businesses offering everything from native plant landscaping services to honeybee products to edible natives taste testing.

The nurseries reported an estimated 10,817 plants sold collectively, totaling to sales over $72,104.97 for these nurseries (with all 15 responding) and vendor businesses! The vendors rated the event overall as a 4.8 of 5 (with 31 of 42 total vendors/exhibitors responding).

Educational Speaker Stage

Speaker stage

The third year of the Speaker Stage included a variety of presentations. The stage provided our vendors and exhibitors a unique opportunity to give a short TED-style talk to our attendees, and they took us up on it!  With a packed schedule and varying topics, 10 speakers took the stage to educate and entertain folks while they rested and enjoyed food from the food trucks.

Milkweed Giveaway

Milkweed giveaway for attendees

For the third year in a row, thanks to generous donors, we had the pleasure of giving away milkweed to support monarch populations during the event. 

Our staff and volunteers gave away 2,316 milkweed plants of 4 different milkweed species to 1032 attendees

Read more on the Milkweed Giveaway page.

Thanks to our event Sponsors!

Our sponsors make it possible for this event to exist and to grow to the level it is today. With their support we were able to purchase radio spots with Michigan Radio to broadcast our event, among other event outreach and operations. We want to thank all of our sponsors again, especially the top-level sponsors:

Our many dedicated, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic volunteers aid in this event to continue smoothly. We had the support of 109 volunteers over the 2 days of preparation, the Spring Native Plant Sale distribution order packing, and the day of the event. 

Post-event survey highlights: (40 responses total)

  • Overall sentiments: The experience was widely seen as positive, meaningful, and enjoyable, with strong emphasis on people, purpose, and a well-run event.
  • When asked to rate the event overall, the average response was 4.75 out of 5.

Volunteers rated the event highly, and we consistently hear from them how much they've learned, how fun it was, and how they feel part of something bigger. So, if you're interested...
​Join us: Sign-up for Volunteer Opportunities

Special Thanks!

In addition to volunteers, a huge thank you and shout out to our advisory group and on-the-grounds leadership team including, from WCWRCO & Master Rain Gardeners: Heather Rice, Susan Bryan, Catie Wytychak, Rachel Leonard, and Janice Das who we're huge help during the event. They are an indispensable group and partnership that keeps the event steering clearly, and they bring all their many skills towards improving and running the event. 

Another special thanks to the Washtenaw County's Solid Waste Department for loaning the Zero Waste stations to reduce our impact of this event.

Also, special thanks to Washtenaw County Natural Area Preservation Program team, for lending their sets of walkie talkies—they were an invaluable support!

Thanks to the Washtenaw Farm Council Grounds! 

The new grounds managers and staff— Kirk, Kyle, and Joe—are continuing to revitalize this venue to be an even more valuable asset to our communities and events.  They were so helpful with the set-up and supportive of our event.  Check out their full events calendar!

Can't wait to see you all next year! Happy planting...

Thanks for reading, and if you made it this far, stay in touch:
Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter or check our events page for information on the upcoming annual plant distributions.
 

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