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Program Description
Event Details
Join West Cook Wild Ones, the Oak Park Public Library, and the Village of Oak Park’s Office of Sustainability and Resilience to learn how you can plant and design a native garden in your front yard or parkway in a way that’s pleasing to both the eye and the earth.
Professional green landscape design experts Christine Nye and Ken Williams will share tips on basic design principles, plant recommendations, site preparation, and general maintenance of your public-facing single or multifamily unit native garden.
The presentation hour will be followed by a Q&A with the speakers and the Oak Park Village Forester. In-person participants are welcome to stay after the presentations for refreshments prepared by a local eco-friendly chef and informal discussion with the panel as well as local gardeners and community organizations.
This event is brought to you in partnership with the library and West Cook Wild Ones and The Village of Oak Park's Office of Sustainability and Resilience.
Registration recommended for in-person attendance and required for virtual.
About the presenters
Christine Nye started gardening alongside her grandmother as a young child. This led to a long and varied horticulture career which included 25 years as Horticultural Programs Manager at Chicago’s John G. Shedd Aquarium. Her efforts there included not only native habitat gardens, but also food gardens that fed both people and the aquarium’s animal collection. She has served on the boards of several ecologically sustainable land use organizations, and is now on the Board of The Land Conservancy of McHenry County. She also serves as a Mentor for The Wildflower Preservation Committee, and grows all kinds of food, most of it from seed.
Ken Williams has worked in horticulture for over 30 years. He first fell in love with native flora while hiking alpine meadows of his native Colorado. Later he found a similar beauty in the tall grass prairies of southeast Kansas. He combined this interest with a lifetime of vegetable gardening to develop effective native garden maintenance techniques. For 16 years, he applied these techniques to the landscape of a 100 acre city park and zoo. Since 2008, often collaborating with his wife Christine Nye, he has participated in the Chicago area ecological landscape movement.