Caro Garden Club

05/12/2026

Our workers got orders assembled in record time this morning! We are READY FOR PICKUPS!

05/10/2026

🪻🌼ATTENTION PLANT SALE CUSTOMERS🌼🪻
Pick-ups for your flats, pots and perennials on Tuesday will be from NOON-6:00PM! Due to the freezing cold night overnight Monday, we will have to have plants delivered and assemble all your orders Tuesday morning rather than having our usual Monday workday. If you need to pick up before noon we will get your order ready ASAP! Sorry for any inconvenience!

05/10/2026

05/09/2026

Saturday!!! Caro Farmers Market! Be there at the market square!🍩🥖🥐🧁🍔🍿

05/07/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/1Qq5v6dvuv/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Those small purple flowers tucked under the maple tree in spring. The heart-shaped leaves spreading where the lawn thins out. The patch your lawn service sprays and calls it handled.

That's a common blue violet. Native to North America. Here long before your lawn was. And the only plant certain butterfly caterpillars can eat.

Fritillary caterpillars — great spangled, variegated, and others — feed on violet leaves and nothing else. No violets in the yard, no fritillaries in the neighborhood. The spray that removed the w**d removed the nursery.

Violets thrive in partial shade and moist soil — exactly the conditions where turf grass thins and fails. The patches where they spread aren't places you lost grass. They're places grass was struggling. The violet filled a gap the lawn left open.

🌿 What to do with violets in the lawn:

- Leave them, especially under trees and along shaded edges — they're holding ground that grass can't keep
- The flowers and young leaves are edible — mild enough to toss raw into a spring salad
- They spread partly through underground flowers that never open — a hidden second bloom cycle that seeds quietly on its own
- Skip broadleaf herbicide where violets grow — removing them leaves bare soil that w**ds colonize faster than turf recovers
- If you want a tidier look, mow around the violet patches and let them stay as defined groundcover islands

The plant most lawns treat as a problem is the one holding the pollinator chain together in the shade 🌿

05/05/2026

Early spring work is ongoing at the Botanical Garden, across from the hospital. Today we have Shasta Daisy divisions available in the courtyard - bring a bucket! We may or may not get some salvia divisions out there soon!

05/02/2026

Spring blooms in the Botanical Garden.

04/30/2026

Want to get an early start with native plants this year?

It's here! Our spring 2026 off-site native plant sale calendar with our Mobile Native Plant Nursery is here! These native plant sales are fundraisers for our host groups and help support their missions! So when you buy native plants at our off-site sales, you are not only supporting us and Michigan's Native Plant, pollinator and bird populations, but you are also supporting some awesome organizations throughout Southeast Michigan! It's a Win-Win-Win!! Please share in your groups and with your friends! And we hope to see you this season at a native plant sale near you!

04/30/2026

Our April meeting was held today at member Toni’s home. We had a presentation from Rachael from the Family Enrichment Center in Caro, looking for help with gardening with their preschoolers. (Yes, we can help with that!) After our business meeting Linda guided us through making seed balls with wildflower seeds provided by the Conservation District. (Can’t wait to see what come up!) Brenda created the beautiful arrangement which was delivered after the meeting to the Bardwells, the current owners of Hanby Bread Co. They have graciously allowed our board to hold monthly board meetings there, where we get to snack on delicious baked goods and sip “designer coffee” that is oh, so good, while conducting business.

Our Spring Plant Sale is officially closed! We will be picking up the last of the orders from our post office box and doing the final tally on Saturday. Thank you all for your orders! Please visit our gardens this summer and see where our profits get planted. 🌺❤️🌺

04/27/2026

Ever noticed droplets on the edges of plant leaves in the morning? It might look like dew, but it’s actually something cooler — guttation!

This pic shows it happening on our strawberry plants in the retail hoop house this morning 🍓☀️

Guttation is when a plant pushes out excess water through tiny pores at the leaf edges — usually overnight when soil moisture is high and the air is still. Unlike dew, this moisture comes from inside the plant!

You’ll see it in strawberries, tomatoes, grasses, and even houseplants like pothos or peace lilies 🌱💧

Next time you see those shiny drops, know it’s just your plants doing their thing!

🌿