Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance

🌸 Day 3 of our $1,500 Drive

It’s Garden Wildlife Week —
and Every Flower Counts

$620 raised  ·  $880 to go  ·  3 days in

We’re three days into our $1,500 fundraising drive, and you’ve helped us raise $620 so far. That’s real momentum — and we’re carrying it right into Garden Wildlife Week (May 26–June 1).

What is Garden Wildlife Week?

Garden Wildlife Week is an annual celebration that asks a simple but powerful question: What is your outdoor space doing for wildlife? Whether you have a sprawling backyard, a small balcony, or a single window box — the answer matters more than you might think.

As natural habitats shrink and urban areas expand, our gardens — collectively — have become one of the most important wildlife corridors left. Every native flower, every patch of clover left unmowed, every shallow dish of water is a lifeline.

At Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance, we fight hard in courtrooms and hearing rooms. But Garden Wildlife Week reminds us that conservation also happens in your front yard — literally.

Your garden can be home to all of these.

Small Gardens. Big Stakes.

Pollinators are in freefall. Monarch butterfly populations have crashed by more than 80%. Bat populations face white-nose syndrome and habitat loss. And one of the most heartbreaking stories in Wisconsin wildlife is the rusty patched bumblebee — once a common sight across the upper Midwest, now federally endangered, hanging on in scattered pockets of the state.

A pollinator garden — even a small one — can be a genuine lifeline. Native plants like wild bergamot, coneflower, anise hyssop, and goldenrod provide the nectar and pollen that monarchs, native bees, and bats depend on across their entire life cycle. When you plant for pollinators, you’re not just adding color to your yard. You’re rebuilding a food web.

From My Own Front Yard

A few years ago, I put in an 8×8 pollinator garden in my front yard. I wasn’t sure how much difference that small a space could make. I had no idea.

Bumblebees showed up almost immediately. Then hummingbirds. Rabbits started using it for cover — and then one spring, they nested in it, raising their babies right there in the middle of my yard. Butterflies. Insects of every kind. The sheer density of life in that little patch of native plants was unlike anything I’d ever seen in a conventional lawn or garden.

Now, every year, we expand it by another two feet. The goal: eventually, my entire front yard will be nothing but native prairie and pollinator habitat. No grass. No chemicals. Just life.

It is absolutely worth it. Start with whatever space you have. The wildlife will find you.

My front yard pollinator garden — photos taken this morning, May 24, 2026.

— Melissa Smith, Founder & Executive Director, Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance

Miss Our Endangered Species Day Film Festival?

We featured an extraordinary short film on the rusty patched bumblebee — following photographer Clay Bolt across the country as he searches for a species on the edge of extinction, and finally finds it here, in Wisconsin. It was produced by Day’s Edge Productions in partnership with our Endangered Species Day partners at the Xerces Society.

▶  A Ghost in the Making: Searching for the Rusty Patched Bumble Bee  · Watch on YouTube

The full Endangered Species Day Short Film Festival — six films, a live panel with Xerces Society, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Endangered Species Coalition, and The Conservation Fund — is still available on demand:

We’re $880 Away From Our Goal

If this work matters to you — the legal fights, the community education, the storytelling that connects people to the wildlife we’re fighting for — please consider a gift today. Every dollar moves us closer to that $1,500 finish line.

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3).
Your donation is tax-deductible.

Great Lakes Wildlife Alliance  ·  Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf & Wildlife
117 Ardmore Drive, Madison WI 53713  ·  msmith@wiwolvesandwildlife.org

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