Events

New garden tour focuses on native plants

People who want to attract more birds, butterflies and other pollinators to their home gardens can take the first-ever “Birds, Bees & Butterflies: A Native Garden Tour” in Oak Park and River Forest on Sunday, Sept. 7, from 2 to 5:30 p.m.

The Birds, Bees & Butterflies tour will include about 11 public and private native gardens.  Suggested donation is $7 for adults; children are free.  A guided bike tour of the gardens will be offered, leaving from the forest preserve at 2:00 p.m. Or, tour-goers can take the tour at their own pace by bike or car.

The tour will focus on Oak Park and River Forest landscapes featuring Illinois native plants. Unique plants for shade, sun, rain gardens, clay soil and other applications will be highlighted.

The tour will offer ideas for those who currently have no native plants in their yards as well as ideas for people who are very knowledgeable about natives. Tour stops will include established native plant gardens as well as those that are “in progress” or are transitioning from non-natives to natives. Here are a few descriptions of featured gardens:

Mixed Company: One garden marries natives with non-natives to showcase a lovely old church. Birds, bees, butterflies, and even dragonflies flit across the garden.

Pretty as Petunias (without the work): The entire front yard of a private home has been transformed by native trees, grasses, and flowers. Not a blade of turf grass is mowed, fertilized or watered.

Butterfly Haven: Another yard strives to feed all types of butterflies with host plants (a mix of natives and non-natives) for larva as well as nectar sources for the long nose of our fluttering friends.

The tour wraps up with a drop-in Native Garden Fair at the Cook County Forest Preserve District General Headquarters at Lake and Harlem Avenues in River Forest from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. Participants can enjoy refreshments, mingle with fellow native gardeners, learn more about native gardening and where to get native plants, obtain seeds to start now or in the spring, and sign up to be part of the exciting OPRF Wildlife Corridor, which will link Thatcher Woods with Columbus Park through residential native gardens.  There will also be games and children's activities.

Participants can register and pick up a map on the day of the tour at Cook County Forest Preserve at the northwest corner of Lake and Harlem.  Advance registration will be available on or before August 31th at http://www.greencommunityconnections.org/2014-native-plant-tour/

Free parking is available behind Cook County Forest Preserve Building, accessible from Bonnie Brae Place.  Turn north on Bonnie Brae one block west of Harlem.

The tour is a joint effort between the West Cook chapter of Wild Ones and Green Community Connections. Learn more about West Cook Wild Ones at  www.facebook.com/wildoneswestcook and
http://westcook.wildones.org/  Learn more about Green Community Connections at www.greencommunityconnections.org