‘I love to sit in the garden and play in the dirt.”
Christine McKenna is no grubby digger, however, and what she does is considerably more involved than playing in the dirt.
She may be the only person in Oak Park to have a garden certified by the National Wildlife Federation as an official “Wildlife Habitat.”.
“My boyfriend did it,” she confesses. “He wanted me to get recognition for what I do.”
Located at 817 Gunderson Ave., McKenna’s front, side and back yards are more than mere gardens. They are prairie habitats, designed to sustain local and migrating wildlife. And she has the official National Wildlife Federation Wildlife Habitat plaque in her front yard to prove it.
“In this part of the Midwest, wildlife primarily means birds and butterflies,” she explains. “We have what most people see in their yard-doves, finches, woodpeckers, cardinals, titmouses and bluejays.”
When certifying a yard, the National Wildlife Federation looks to see if it promotes bird migration and diversity by offering food, water, cover and places for raising young. “We offer the birds a place to stop during their journey to warmer climates,” McKenna says. “This is especially unique and important because we are in an urban area where there aren’t many healthy places year-round.”
She began seriously developing her Gunderson yard in 1998. “I am big on ecology,” she says simply. An architect by training, McKenna works for a government agency managing people who create buildings tailored to governmental needs. “It’s real estate-we build buildings with gun ranges, laboratories, whatever is needed.”
Her garden is her creative outlet. “We have an old oak tree in our city-owned parkway that is magnificent, but it makes a lot of shade,” she notes. “The yard was pretty ho-hum.”
Faced with the shade challenge, McKenna dug up the grass and researched shade vegetation. Ferns, grasses, hostas were the perennials she mainly planted. “I really like caladium-I get the bulbs from Florida-and then in addition to the perennials, I planted annuals that like the shade, including begonias and impatiens.”
McKenna says she does most of her gardening in the spring. “I turn the soil, prepare it for summer and plant annuals and perennials,” she says. “The rest of the year I just weed.”
“One year we had a terrible ice storm-it ripped the gutters off-and I ended up having a raccoon in the attic along with oppossums and birds,” she recalls, laughing. “It was pure carnage. The raccoon ate the birds and the possums; then he moved out to the pond and drained it of all the goldfish.” Fortunately the raccoon moved on before McKenna was forced to call for professional assistance.
In the winter, McKenna provides plenty of bird seed, suet and the like. “Local birds depend on this area for sustenance-especially the water.”
Her ponds have motors and even heaters to make sure the water is always 38 degrees, meaning the plants die but the goldfish can live outdoors year round. “They swim more slowly, but they are still swimming in January,” she says. The slate rocks of the pond, she says, warm in the sun and provide comfortable resting spots. “Once we saw an unusual little bird-almost like a finch, but black with a white and red head.” She’s still learning about the many creatures her habitat attracts.
“It is especially beautiful in winter when there is snow falling and the steam rises off the pond, and the goldfish are swimming,” she says. “It is magical looking with the light reflecting-just lovely to watch.”
McKenna says her neighbors support her prairie-style garden. “On our block, it is green yard after green yard, and then there’s me,” she says. “The neighbors come over all the time to look at the yard, and to talk.”
Her yard includes ponds-both in the ground garden and on an upper porch-and many plantings.
“When we were creating the picnic area, we had sand down and all winter the birds used the sand to bathe in,” she recalls. “Birds can’t bathe in water in the severe cold, and it was interesting to watch them dust themselves off with the sand.”
For more information on how to turn your yard into a wildlife habitat, the website for the National Wildlife Federation offers a complete scrapbook at www.enature.com.
Green gardener behind Good Shepherd
Ginger Vanderveer began gardening out of grief.
“We had the second oldest elm tree in front of our house [in Oak Park] and it died,” she said. “I came out one day and the village had put a big dot on it, designating that it had Dutch Elm Disease.”
Not wanting to believe it, she rubbed off the spot, called a specialist and had him inject the tree with solutions to try and revive it.
“The next year it budded beautifully, then all the leaves fell off, and I knew it was dead.” She mourned the 100-year-old tree that was nearly 16 feet around. With the tree removed, Vanderveer wanted to landscape the remaining area. “The ground was impossible, so I had read that indigenous prairie plants were hardy, so I tried a few.” The prairie plants flourished and with it Vanderveer’s love of natural vegetation.
A native of St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, Vanderveer came late to her love of prairie plants. Vanderveer says she first learned about them when her daughter was in fourth grade. “She did a unit on the prairie and I was shocked to learn that most of the native plants were extinct by as early as 1860-only something like .01% remain,” she recalls. Among the many native plants Vanderveer harvests today are: butterfly weed, varietal grasses, blue stem, drop seed, Kankakee Mallow, prairie dock, varieties of goldenrod, bee balm and wild petunia.
Vanderveer contacted her local elementary school, Mann, and expressed an interest in planting a prairie garden. She was paired with an educator and together they developed a prairie program for fourth graders. Soon the areas around Mann School were sprouting grasses and bushes. Even though her own children have grown up and graduated from Mann, she still tends the gardens. “I have a helper whom I notice is trimming the plants which really isn’t always a good idea,” she notes. “Certain plants like the asters and the ironweed have really grown tall this year, and I’ve had to cut them back so the children can see.”
Vanderveer enjoyed a long career in computers and looks at gardening as a hobby. She donates many native plantings to friends and area groups.
One such group is Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
“A man there had developed a butterfly garden and asked me to help him by donating native plants,” she said. When the man left, the church considered plowing the prairie under.
“I said ‘No!’ and jumped in,” she said, laughing.
Good Shepherd, located at 611 Randolph in Oak Park, now boasts several native gardens complete with logs, stepping stones and hanging planters. “We like to plant annuals to give more color,” she said. “This past Sunday, we began a special program for the children, teaching them that we are not only good stewards of the church but also good stewards of the planet,” she adds.
That has expanded into a “green team” that leads the charge on eco-friendly activities at Good Shepherd-activities such as regulating the thermostats.
“Some rooms are set as low as 55 degrees [during the cold months] on the weekdays to conserve energy,” says Vanderveer. “On the weekends, we warm the church-the amount of energy we have conserved is astounding.” The group also uses CFO bulbs. (“I call them the twisty bulbs,” she says.) And they recycle, use organic coffee and even organic cleaning products. In addition, the church also uses block carpeting to replace one square at a time. Vanderveer was so proud of her church’s grounds that she recently entered them in the Chicago Tribune’s garden contest.
Not only have her gardens attracted attention, but local animals are beginning to call the gardens home.
“We have hummingbirds and dragonflies,” she says. “It really represents the circle of life.”
