Native Plants Star on Sept. 6 Garden Tour and Plant Sale in Madison

Beloved for their benefits to butterflies and bees, native plants will be blooming in abundance at the Madison Environmental Commission’s annual garden tour and native plant sale, a partnership with The Nature of Reading Bookshop. 

The self-guided tour, themed “Saving Nature with Your Yard,” will be held on Saturday, September 6, from 12:00 to 4:00 pm (rain date is Sunday, September 7). Ticket holders can visit any time within those hours to see how their neighbors are shrinking lawns and creating pollinator habitats. Included in the tour are two secret gardens and an energy-efficient house with a green roof. 

Tickets are $10 and will fund the ongoing Nature Lover’s Speaker Series co-hosted by the Environmental Commission (MEC) and The Nature of Reading Bookshop. Tickets can be purchased here. 

“This year we’re calling the tour ‘Saving Nature with Your Yard’ because each tour location will detail how many butterflies and moth caterpillars various plants support,” says Claire Whitcomb, MEC chair. “Since it takes 6,000 to 9,000 caterpillars to feed just one brood of chickadees, gardens need to have a lot of native plants and trees. Fortunately, Madison has a lot of native plant enthusiasm.”

Since native plants can be hard to find at garden centers, the MEC has invited Toadshade Wildflower Farm to bring a selection of plants and seeds for sale. 

“The opportunity to see a variety of native plants growing in different local settings—and how they’ll enliven your yard with birds, butterflies, bumblebees, and other fascinating insects—is really inspiring and fun,” says Bridget Daley, an MEC tour organizer and native plants gardening coach. For the best selection, she recommends pre-ordering at Toadshade.com for pickup in Madison during the tour.

Another tour attraction is a robust list of eco exhibitors. These include Blue Sky Green Earth electric landscaping, the Great Swamp Watershed Association, and the Morris County chapter of the Native Plant Society of New Jersey. Garden design experts will be on hand to answer questions, and The Nature of Reading Bookshop will sell books that inspired the tour, including Dr. Douglas Tallamy’s bestseller, Nature’s Best Hope, and his new release, How Can I Help? Saving Nature with Your Yard, which has 499 answers to questions from his popular talks.

“We’re so excited to co-host this tour once again,” says Hailey Brock, founder and owner of The Nature of Reading Bookshop. “Madison is home to so many passionate native plant advocates—this is a great opportunity to witness the powerful changes that people have made in their own yards to support our local ecosystems. Each week I see people pick up their first native plant guide or their first Tallamy book, and I’ve always felt the annual garden tour is the perfect place to learn more about practical changes you can make in your own yard from members of our own local community.”