Back in 1953, when St. Charles, Illinois was void of expanded roads and booming subdivisions, retired farmer Walter Stevens turned his interest in woodland flowers into a small business called The Natural Garden, where he personally dug perennials on-site for customers. Today, under the ownership of Jan Sorensen, the nursery consists of a four-acre retail and garden center and wholesale department, as well as twenty-five acres on which more than a thousand native plants are propagated. According to Sorenson, "Interest in native gardening has grown in the last five years, especially with homeowners who want to attract wildlife."
Stevens experienced an immediate interest in woodland plants, but prairie plants have another story to tell. Just ask Dot Wade, who with her late husband, Alan Wade, opened Wind Drift Prairie in Oregon, Illinois in the early seventies. "While most people were familiar with woodland flowers such as shooting star and columbine, many gardeners did not believe a beautiful landscape could include prairie plants, such as butterfly weed (Asclepia tuberosa) and prairie blazing star (Liatris pycnostrachya). Most people thought they were just weeds," laughs Dot Wade. "I knew better, from studying botany in college. The biggest hurdle when starting our business was selling our philosophy to gardeners and making them realize there is a native plant, including prairie plants, for every situation; wet or dry, sun or shade."
Today, with millions of Americans gardening in conjunction with nature, rather than against her, the interest in using native plants is catching on with both city dwellers and suburbanites. Art Gara and Linda Schwab of Art and Linda’s Wildflowers readily agree. They have a thriving business selling native woodland and prairie plants at farmer’s markets throughout Chicago and the near suburbs, such as Oak Park, Wheaton, LaGrange Park, and Skokie. Through a mailing list that exceeds 2,000 addresses, they offer a variety of rare species such as prairie sundrops (Oenothera pilosella), which cannot readily be found in the local Chicago area. During spring, summer, and fall, Art and Linda provide a tremendous resource and service to Chicago residents who realize you don’t need a five-acre parcel and all day sun to grow natives. For example, if trees provide deep shade most of the day, woodland plants such as great Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum canaliculatum), Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica), wild columbine (Aquilegia) and shootingstar (Dodecatheon meadia) will find a home in these surroundings. If gardens receive partial sun, use plants that grow on the edges of prairies and woodlands such as black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), purple coneflower, smooth aster (Aster coneflowers), and false sunflower (Heliopsis helianthoides). Perpetually damp areas that receive lots of direct sunlight will welcome wetland plants, such as cardinal flower (Lobelia), great blue lobelia (Lobelia), Joe-pye weed (Eupatorium maculatum), and swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Even apartment dwellers can attract hummingbirds by planting short sunflowers or monarda (Bergamot) in a flower box. The seeds are relished by finches, chickadees, and juncos.
Unfortunately, there has been a down side to this increased interest in native plants. Since humans gravitate toward instant satisfaction, many nurseries have been digging up and selling healthy, mature specimens from the wild. If, as gardeners, we are truly interested in preserving the natural habitats, it is our responsibility to protect the flowers in the wild, as well as those planted in our gardens. Do some questioning before buying and definitely look at prices. Avoid unusually inexpensive plants, because they may be of wild origin.
Sorenson is very ethical about seed production. All plants sold at The Natural Garden are indigenous to this area. Indigenous plants refer to those species which occur naturally in a specific area. In relation to the nursery trade, indigenous plants are ideally those species that have been grown from locally collected seed for replanting or reintroducing back into that area. Back when Illinois prairie expert Bob Harlock worked at The Natural Garden, he earned the right to collect seeds from railways and small-town cemeteries. Now many sites are managed by restoration experts. But Sorenson is not dismayed. "Our main purpose still continues to propagate and grow plants that are slowly disappearing," says Sorenson.
Another pioneer in Illinois native nurseries, Anne Meyers, agrees. For the last thirty years, Meyers, who owns Enders Greenhouse in Cherry Valley, Illinois, has been propagating and growing over 300 container-grown species of Midwestern native woodland, wildflowers, ferns, forbs, grasses, and sedges for prairies, savannas, and wetland. Like many native plant purists, her sources of seed are from a local fifteen-mile radius.
Sorenson, Meyers, and Gara share a sincere commitment to the preservation, improvement, and enhancement of our environment, as do many native nursery owners. They also strive to consciously and ethically provide superior products and services through education and involvement with the community. "My pet peeve is detention areas in new subdivisions," remarks Meyers. "These are ugly, wasted areas that could be beautified with native wetland plants. There is a big need for educating homeowners, builders, and community government in the uses of native plants." Meyers has also been instrumental in helping propagate plants for the restoration of 700 acres of Nygren Wetland, located approximately two miles west of Rockton, Illinois in Winnebago County. Volunteers transported 130,000 seedlings to her greenhouse where they received the proper care for growing.
Gara and Schwab also are committed to sustaining and improving the natural ecosystem of Illinois. They are actively involved with nature organizations, schools, and community groups that work to maintain and restore native plant habitats. For example, they turned a bare, gravel school yard into an inspirational sand prairie for the students at Middleton Elementary School in Skokie.
With their varied backgrounds (he is a former biomedical engineer who suffered from career-ending, work-related injuries; she writes romance novels) plus a respect and love for native plants, Gara and Schwab practice native-plant gardening in an uplifting style that captures their original thinking and generous spirit. In addition to selling at farmers’ markets, they have also produced a successful slide show introducing the beauty of prairie plants at Wolf Road Prairie, at 31st Street and Wolf Road in Westchester, one of the few remaining virgin prairies in this area. His secret, he says, is taking the pictures at dusk. They receive an honorarium for the slide show and give the money to Save the Prairie Society, an all-volunteer not-for-profit organization incorporated in 1975 to save the eighty-acre Wolf Road Prairie in Cook County from development threats.
Of course, every moment in a plant’s life is not a slide-show moment. That reality can be daunting for gardeners about to choose their first native plants. "The growth habits and characteristics of plants are not always apparent when they are restricted to containers", acknowledges Sorensen. That’s why The Natural Garden provides display and trial gardens as examples of the many ways plants can be used in the landscape. Each plant is labeled to help you with identification. Viewing them in a display garden enables you to see a plant’s mature size and habitat. These gardens are also an ongoing learning experience for the staff at The Natural Garden. "One year a plant may perform beautifully, while the next year it may tragically suffer from an unfavorable environmental condition."
For those who want to establish a native garden but feel the need for extra help, Art and Linda’s Wildflowers offers landscaping services. A few years into selling at farmers’ markets, they began to offer a complete native plant design, installation, and consultation service. Gara gets his ideas for landscaping from nature. "One of the most important cornerstones of creating a stable native landscape is to group species by plant community. Most plants develop a relationship amongst themselves; that is, they actually help one another survive by enhancing resistance to disease. You also want to design in order to attract wildlife such as butterflies and birds. I try to design so there is interest and beauty in the garden all year long. For example, native grasses are not only a great addition to your garden with their differing shapes, colors, and textures, but during the winter, their drooping, snow-covered seed heads provide shelter and food for birds and other critters." Art and Linda are invaluable in the process of selecting and identifying plants that make up these various native groups, as well as providing clients their native plant reference books.
They get help from naturalist and ecologist Tom Hintz, on-site naturalist at Wolf Road Prairie, who has done many large and small restorations, as well as John Nocius, horticulturist and landscaper at Brookfield Zoo. Nocius designed the prairie garden at the Zoo’s north entrance, as well as Dragonfly Marsh. A one-acre demonstration wetland created to introduce guests to a typical northwestern Illinois wetland, Dragonfly Marsh consists of two deep pools, an emergent aquatic area, sedge meadow, and wet prairie. Water is pumped from Indian Lake into the pool, and then flows and percolates through the soils. An eighty-five-foot boardwalk allows visitors to overlook the marsh.
All of this enthusiastic expertise means that this year, you can bring the prairies and woodlands of Illinois back onto the land on which you live. And you can do it whether you’re a gardener yourself, or just a casual lover of beauty. You can do it yourself or simply watch the transformation take place as the earth remembers its roots, and blooms.
Resources
Enders Greenhouse, 104 Enders Drive, Cherry Valley, IL 61016; 815-332-5255
The Natural Garden, Inc., 38w443 Highway 64, St. Charles, IL 60175; 630-584-0150
For a schedule of Art and Linda’s Wildflowers sales events and farmers market call them at 708-863-6534 or visit their Web site.