For Alison Settles ’27, weeding the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership’s native prairie garden often felt circular. Working spot by spot for a couple of hours each day, she would move through one section only to cycle back by week’s end and find that the first patch had grown wild again, though not always with the same weeds.
That cycle taught Settles something that now sits at the heart of her Senior Integrated Project (SIP): reviving a native garden requires more than removing weeds. Open ground must be replanted, new plants must be watered and protected until they are established, and future caretakers need the knowledge and structure to continue the work.
Hands in the Dirt
Settles, a biology major from Nashville, Tennessee, has spent much of her SIP improving the garden by pulling aggressive invasives, transplanting wanted plants into more pleasing arrangements and, most recently, putting about 200 new native plants in the ground.
The garden was in rough shape when she started. Crown vetch and Queen Anne’s lace, both aggressive and invasive, had taken hold across much of the space, crowding out the native species the garden was meant to showcase. At some point, Settles said, you just have to go scorched earth, as the overgrowth becomes too extreme for one person to remove by hand.
Her main goal was to make the garden presentable and keep the most prevalent invasives in check. But weed removal alone leaves bare soil where new weeds can quickly take hold. Progress requires removing invasive plants, replacing them with natives, and maintaining the new plantings long enough for them to take hold. A recent community workday advanced that process, but it did not complete it.
Choosing the right plants took careful research. Drawing on guidance from native plant nurseries and resources online about which local native species survive in which conditions, Settles prioritized wildflowers that fit their spots without becoming aggressive. She also planned for a mix of colors, a range of heights, and staggered bloom times, so something is flowering through as much of the season as possible.
A Plan that Outlasts a Single Student
But the largest challenge, according to Settles, is continuity. Native gardens, unlike conventional gardens, cannot simply be weeded and mulched. They require horticultural knowledge, and past caretakers have come and gone without leaving records of what was done or how long it took. Without documentation, it becomes difficult to hire and train workers or estimate the time and money needed to care for the gardens. “All these spaces have been living in a sort of state of limbo,” Settles said.
Settles’ solution is a set of guides and educational materials for the students and facilities workers who come after her. The resources will identify common invasive species, explain which native plants fit different areas, and outline a process for replacing weeds before they reclaim newly opened ground. She hopes the framework can support collaboration, with facilities staff handling some of the more strenuous physical work and a student worker or intern making horticulturally informed planting decisions. She envisions the garden as a living learning lab modeled on her own internship experience, self-directed but supported by resources, structure, goals and accountability, with minimal demand on a faculty or staff member’s time.
“It’s something you want to share with other people,” Settles said about her introduction to native gardening. “I always was thinking, how can I get this to more people?”
Settles didn’t arrive at the project as a novice. The summer after her sophomore year, she completed an internship at the Dow Science Center wildflower sanctuary, another native garden on campus, working alongside Paul Sotherland, professor emeritus of biology.
She knew little about native plants when she started, but Sotherland’s passion was contagious, she said.
“He just has a lot of energy and drive,” Settles said. “It made me very passionate about it.”
Yet the internship left her with a question she couldn’t answer in a single summer. How could more students and community members get involved? Her SIP is her answer.
Growing a Community of Caretakers
As a result, outreach became a central part of the project at the Arcus Center. Settles organized community workdays that taught volunteers to care for the garden with little instruction. The first was hectic, she said, so she trained friends to become skilled garden workers who could lead teams. By her estimate, that increased efficiency tenfold.
One of the greatest parts of the project, Settles said, was the collaboration with all the amazing people who supported her achieving in her goals—she says that fostering community, connections, and togetherness was an extremely essential tool in her successes. Local native planting experts in the Kalamazoo area specifically were indispensable to her project.
“Everyone you meet with has such a huge amount of passion for this sort of work,” Settles says about collaborating with local enthusiasts. “And they really want to see you succeed.”
Settles notes that during the most recent workday, Quyen Edwards, president of Kalamazoo Area Wild Ones, even donated and planted some native species from her own personal nursery, The Painted Lady Greenhouse.
Additionally, Settles was proud that community members seemed to not only do a great job, but they had a great time doing it!
“Everybody at the end of the day was like, ‘Hey, that was actually pretty fun,” she said.
Students and community members even expressed interest in returning for more weeding events and garden open hours, and local parents asked Settles about a lesson and volunteer workday for children studying biodiversity through a robotics project. She counts the workdays among the achievements she is proudest of, and they changed how she thinks about conservation.
“Science education is doable and anyone can do it,” Settles said. “It just takes time, effort and organization.”
Visitors have reported seeing hummingbirds, pollinators and other birdlife at the garden, but Settles cautions that those observations are anecdotal and likely reflect the plant diversity that already existed rather than the early results of her work. Even in rough conditions, she said, the garden supports far more biodiversity than conventional landscaping around it, and meaningful changes may take years to observe.
Settles doesn’t necessarily expect a career in native plantings, but she plans to keep doing this work in her own life. The project, she said, taught her to take complex scientific information and make it simple enough for anyone to act on. She says this is the key to making real progress in conservation efforts.
“Change requires community involvement, and community involvement requires educating the community,” Settles said.
Her SIP has moved the Arcus Center prairie garden forward, with about 200 new native plants in the ground and a road map for future caretakers. But roughly 800 square feet of bare earth still needs to be planted, and the newest plants must be watered and protected for a full year before those that survive can be considered established. Settles estimates that a full restoration could take five or six years. This year’s plantings are a trial run, she said, showing that with time, organization, knowledge and collaboration, the garden can make slow but steady progress.
