Deerfield’s sustainable yards are bursting with life, restoration and renewal.
Let’s take a step back from the uncertainty and disruption 2020 has brought to all of our doorsteps for just a moment to celebrate our local gardens and sustainable practices.
On Go Green Deerfield’s virtual sustainable yard tour you’ll find inspiration and great ideas to add to your yard this fall, plus lots of beautiful pictures. Seven local gardeners have volunteered to share their work on the tour pages below. Discover the joy of creating a place where life can flourish!
Dave
Dave’s sustainable yard is a concert of summer spectacle. He incorporates vegetables, herbs, showy, native pollinator plants and fruit-bearing bushes, along with rain barrels and composting.
Debbie
Debbie’s sustainable yard overlooks Deerfield’s Trail Tree nature area. Life is in abundance here because Debbie has committed decades to fostering the benefits of native species not only in her yard but in the adjacent nature area.
Leia
Leia’s sustainable yard is not only beautiful, it is a source of wonder for her and her young daughter to explore. Together, they search for insect larvae, pollinators, and toads!
Noelle
Noelle is new to native gardening and sustainable lawn design. She is carefully eliminating parts of the lawn and replacing it with pollinator friendly plantings. She advises that “you don’t have to do everything at once and to take baby steps.”
Melissa
Inspired by Piet Oudolf, designer of the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park, Melissa has created a showcase of form, texture and structure in her suburban garden.
Amy
Amy’s sustainable practices embody the ideal of nurturing the ecosystem by supporting what is native and well-suited to a Midwest yard. One of our key challenges in Deerfield is storm water mitigation due to the loss of ecologically productive open land.
Deb
Deb’s climate victory garden has a unique structural design. From a distance you might think it’s a giant stringed instrument, but upon closer inspection you’ll see pole beans, sugar snap peas, zucchini and cucumber winding their way up the roped trellis. Tomatoes are not far behind. Companion edible plants like marigolds, nasturtiums, and herbs surround the veggies.