Recommended trees and plants for the Central Lakes area of Minnesota

Last month we shared our recommended trees and plant lists for rewilding your backyard woods in East Central Minnesota (also known as the Anoka Sand Plains, Big Woods, and St. Paul-Baldwin Plains and Moraines subsections). 

Today we’re sharing tree and plant lists for the Chippewa Plains and Pine Moraine-Outwash Plains ecoregion— area 3 on the map.

As a reminder, all of the trees in our recommendation lists are: 1) native to Minnesota or nearby in the Eastern Deciduous Forest, 2) climate resilient, and 3) beneficial to the little creatures that are the base of the ecosystem. 

Forests in transition

You may be surprised at some of the recommended tree species. You may ask why are our native pines and quaking aspen not on this list, yet we’re recommending shagbark hickory. Aren’t pines and aspen very common to the landscape in this region?

These recommendations, which may be unsettling at first glance, fall into the larger conversation on climate adaptation. Climate adaptation practices can look very different depending on the goals and objectives of the landowner and manager. Climate adaptation practices fall on a spectrum of three approaches and differ based on the desired future conditions of the forest: Resistance, Resilience, and Transition.

We’ll expand more on each of these concepts in an upcoming article. These recommended tree and plant lists fall under Transition, in which assisted migration is one of many management tools that we use to create healthy future forests that will thrive in the future climate. 

Assisted migration

Assisted migration involves moving species that are predicted to perform well in a future climate to new locations based on their predicted future range. Assisted migration is only one of many climate adaptations that natural resource managers can use to manage forests for long-term health and productivity under a changing climate.

We highly recommend working with a natural resource professional to determine if assisted migration is the best option for your land and your goals.

Luckily, you have more flexibility to experiment with planting trees in your backyard woods compared to people with larger acreages. You can dedicate extra care to the assisted migration species you plant in your backyard woods, monitor how well they perform during our cold winters and stormy summers, and manage those trees appropriately. (The USDA Forest Service has this helpful article if you want to learn more about assisted migration.)

One last reminder: If you have a woodlot between 1-20 acres, want to rewild your backyard woodland, and live in area 3 on the map, these tree and plant lists are for you. If you don’t live in this area or have more acreage, stay tuned for future lists for the rest of the state and for woodlands larger than 20 acres.