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PHOTO: native plant garden

Native Plant Garden

Discover ideas for using native Illinois plants in your home landscape.

The Native Plant Garden displays three distinct areas — a woodland garden with native plants preferring part shade, a prairie garden showcasing sun-loving native prairie plants, and a habitat garden designed to appeal to birds and butterflies.

Throughout, the garden shows off the special beauty of Illinois' native flora. This garden is an official demonstration site for Chicago Wilderness.

Find out what's in bloom now.

Virtual Tour

The beauty of native plants

PHOTO: native plant garden Visitors who hurry too quickly to the Fruit & Vegetable Garden, the Bulb Garden or the Aquatic Garden just might pass right by a little garden gem nestled between the main path and the lake. The Native Plant Garden, a half-acre garden area, incorporates three distinct natural plant communities that serve as inspiration and education to all gardeners interested in creating gardens using native plant material. Woodland, prairie and habitat garden areas all feature compatible plants to grow when establishing any one of these three environments in your backyard.

The woodland garden displays native plants preferring part shade, from tall trees to spring ephemerals. A prairie garden features sun-loving, native prairie plants. The habitat garden contains native plants suitable for nesting as well as for providing food.

Through designed garden spaces, signs and a brochure, visitors learn how to utilize entire communities of native plants in home garden conditions, ranging from damp and shady to dry and sunny. To demonstrate the beauty of Native Plant Gardens, varied plants are displayed in sweeps of color and texture. Using principles of horticulture and ecology, the garden offers helpful hints on how to get started, where to obtain locally grown native plants and how to manage maintenance.

The woodland garden displays native plants that prefer part shade. Layers of plants with sequential bloom times range from tall trees to tiny wildflowers. Look for shagbark hickory, American hop hornbeam and swamp white oak. Companion understory shrubs include witch hazel, spicebush, buttonbush and native raspberry. A few of the perennials and spring ephemerals include wild ginger, Christmas fern, and red and yellow trillium.

PHOTO: native plant garden The prairie garden was designed with low-growing plants in front and taller ones in back to allow visitors to "look through" the entire community of plants. This open, inviting garden blooms first with shooting star and prairie smoke, followed by short grasses and perennials such as wild indigo, early coreopsis, wild petunia and little bluestem. Last to bloom are gentian, flowering spurge, butterfly weed and the tall grasses. The grasses and wildflowers growing here are all suitable plants for backyard naturalistic gardens. The grasses have an added benefit of attracting birds to feast on the mature seedheads in fall.

The habitat garden, complete with birdhouses, feeders and beautiful statuary, showcases the appropriate plants that will encourage birds and butterflies to frequent your yard. In addition to forbs and grasses, many shrubs or vines with berries are also attractive to wildlife. Rose, hawthorn, bittersweet, winterberry, chokeberry and serviceberry provide welcome food sources and nesting sites for birds.

Visitors to the Native Plant Garden will find interpretive panels explaining how to select and combine native plants in the garden as well as information on which resident birds are nesting in the garden. A large wooden deck complete with built-in benches and a glass A-frame roof creates a welcome space for gardeners wishing to pause in the middle of the garden and observe the insect, bird and plant life all around. The winding path through the habitat garden leads to a lovely brick patio at the lake's edge — perfect for spotting resident as well as migrating waterfowl.

Gardeners will learn patience when reconstructing plant communities. These garden spaces are works in progress, requiring three years before plants are on their own. Before then, gardeners must water and weed regularly, learning how to recognize native seedlings from the aggressive undesirables. The Native Plant Garden has been designative by Chicago Wilderness as a demonstration site for the use of native plants in home gardens.