What’s Happening Now

Friends of Greenview and Pioneer Nature Area are actively involved in various stewardship activities to restore and enhance the natural features and beauty of this wonderful community open space. We organize community work days and educational events throughout the season. The generous donations and grants allow us to buy native seeds and plants, to and engage a professional consultant to conduct restoration projects, and guide our overall strategy to improve the nature area.

Explore Greenview Nature Area

The Seasons of Greenview Nature Area

The nature area changes with each season. Here’s what you can see and experience in Greenview throughout the year.

Spring brings the nature area to life, with signs of the season found throughout the landscape. In Pioneer Woods, woodland spring ephemerals like trout lilies, spring beauty, wild geranium, and Jack-in-the-pulpit make their brief but beautiful appearance.

The meadow wakes more slowly, but among the emerging prairie grasses, you can spot some of the earliest wildflowers, such as pussytoes, strawberries, violets, and daisy-like fleabane. These early blooms are important for pollinators emerging in spring. The pond area also serves as important habitat for migrating and nesting birds and provides a home for frogs and toads.

As temperatures warm up in late spring and early summer, the nature area transforms with a profusion of wildflowers. Greenview is home to common, swamp, and butterfly varieties of milkweed, along with wild roses, yarrow, monarda, mountain mint, penstemon digitalis, and many wildflowers. These blooms attract a wide range of pollinators, including many types of butterflies, and birds.

In late summer, the Central Meadow bursts with colorful wildflowers, from the golden hues of Goldenrods and Rudbeckia to the purples and pinks of Coneflowers and Ironweed. Bees, beetles, and wasps of all kinds buzz among the blooms, while prairie grasses like Big Bluestem, Indian grass, Little Bluestem, and Switchgrass provide shelter for countless insects and birds.

As fall sets in, asters brighten the landscape with clusters of white, blue, and purple blooms. They provide essential food for insects and are especially popular with butterflies, including migrating monarchs. In the nearby Pioneer Woods, fall brings beautiful colors, with oaks, hickories, and maples showing off shades of amber, gold, and deep red.

As cooler temperatures settle in, the landscape’s colors soften, but prairie grasses and native flower seed heads continue to add interest and texture. They also offer essential food and shelter for wildlife.

Grasses and seed pods, lightly dusted with snow or encased in ice, bring a unique charm to the snowy landscape at the nature area. As winter deepens and the pond freezes, it transforms into a lively hub, welcoming neighborhood ice skaters to its surface.

Friends of Greenview Stewardship Activities

Here are highlights of the stewardship activities completed so far by Friends of Greenview in 2025.

Friends of Greenview volunteers have been sowing seeds during winter, scattering them on top of the snow! Many native seeds need cold, moist conditions to germinate, making this an ideal time to plant. This year, we focused on areas where we recently cleared invasive buckthorn east of the pond and overseeded the meadow to improve wildflower diversity.

Seed mixes, made from locally collected and purchased native plant seeds, were chosen to match each area’s conditions. The purchase of the seeds was made possible by generous donations. In the woods, we scattered shade-tolerant species and native grasses like Virginia Wild-Rye, Canada Wild-Rye, and Bottlebrush Grass to limit buckthorn regrowth and enhance biodiversity around the pond.

Thank you, Ann Arbor Farm & Garden, for helping make this work possible! Learn more about their mission at: https://www.annarborfarmandgarden.org

You can read about what we accomplished in 2024 here.