1866
La Crescent’s John Harris’s apple crop display at the State Fair defies New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley, who wrote, “I would not choose to live in Minnesota because one cannot grow apples there.” The Minnesota Fruit Growers Association is founded.
1868
After years of experimentation, Excelsior’s Peter Gideon invests his last $8 in a bushel of apple seed from Maine and crosses the trees with his Siberian crab apple. The apple thrives and is Minnesota’s first viral banger—he names it Wealthy to honor his wife.
1878
Five years after the Minnesota Fruit Growers Association became the Horticultural Society, the state legislature approves creating a fruit-experiment station near Minnetonka. Charles Haralson is the first superintendent—the apple is named after him.
1885
After working at his uncle’s vegetable and garden business, German immigrant Henry Frederick William Bachman establishes a four-acre vegetable garden with his wife Hattie. The Bachmans expand and by the end of the century have 11 greenhouses on 44 acres.
1907
Minneapolis botany teacher Eloise Butler requests 13 acres surrounding a tamarack bog in Glenwood Park (now Theo Wirth), be set aside for a botany lab and sanctuary for native species. The space is now the oldest public wildflower garden in the U.S.
1908
New parks superintendent Theodore Wirth completes a public rose garden for Lyndale Park—similar to the garden he built in Hartford, CT, the country’s first—with the help of florist Louis Boeglin. Wirth’s rose garden still ranks among Minneapolis’s most cherished spaces.
1914
After selling Minnetonka Fruit Farm (operated by Peter Gideon), the Horticultural Society partners with the U of M’s horticulture department on a new testing farm. They develop dozens of hardier fruit varieties, including the new Latham raspberry and Northstar cherry.
1915
Designed as a Victorian-style “crystal palace” greenhouse, the Como Park Conservatory opens with 3,000 people in attendance. The opening-day crowd takes in Bill Snyder and his Orchestra and St. Paul’s annual exhibition of chrysanthemums.
1930
Joseph Munsinger becomes superintendent of parks for the city of St. Cloud. He uses the labor available from the WPA and the CCC to improve Riverside Park. Now named Munsinger Gardens, it is one of the most spectacular public gardens in the state.
1943
One of 20 million Victory Gardens—plots where Americans grew their own vegetables to assist in the war effort—planted during WWII, the Dowling Community Garden is founded. It will persist as a community garden in the Longfellow neighborhood.
1958
Fruit Breeding Farm director Dr. Leon C. Snyder’s dreams of a large outdoor laboratory and “living classroom” for students come true when the U of M’s horticulture department buys land to establish the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
1972
Grain Belt brewery heiress (and former U of M horticulture student) Lora Noerenberg Hoppe passes away at 85 and gifts her family’s Lake Minnetonka estate to the Three Rivers Park District. Her gardener, Ray Forde, stays on to manage the Noerenberg Gardens.
1979
After the Ordway family hires Japanese designer Masami Matsuda, ninth-generation Japanese gardener, work begins on a grand Sanui-style garden on the land next to the Como Conservatory.
1988
Born of a public-private collaboration between then–Walker director Martin Friedman and then–Park Board superintendent David Fisher, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden opens on 7.5 acres showcasing new works, including the now-iconic Spoonbridge and Cherry.
1988
A few years after U of M horticulturist David Bedford saved a tree from the reject pile—a clone of apple variety MN 1711—to give it one more chance, the Honeycrisp apple is patented. In 2006, the Honeycrisp will become our official state fruit.
2001
The Sesquicentennial Sun chrysanthemum, a frost-tolerant cushion variety of mum developed by the U of M, is selected for its double “Golden Gopher”–colored blooms to celebrate 150 years of the university’s floral breeding achievements.
2005
After a Mother’s Day storm blew tents into parked cars and forced volunteers inside, the Friends School Plant Sale migrates to the State Fairgrounds. The new digs spur further expansion, and now the sale is one of the biggest in the Midwest.
2010
U of M horticulture program buddies and Tangletown Gardens founders Scott Endres and Dean Engelmann acquire the renovated gas station across the street (formerly Liberty Frozen Custard) and transform it into their garden-to-table eatery, Wise Acre.
2024
A Delta Air Lines flight powered by winter camelina-based fuel takes off from MSP Airport. The camelina, a flowering herb that’s been developed as a cover crop, was grown in Minnesota and North Dakota by Wayzata-based ag giant Cargill.