Chapters in Illinois

Enhance your enjoyment of nature and deepen your knowledge of native plants by becoming a Citizen Scientist in your own yard, local park or forest preserve. There are many ways to record your interactions with nature, ranging from the Audubon Christmas bird count, to posting observations on i-Naturalist. You can even become a dragonfly, frog or butterfly monitor. Join us and learn more. 

Educational meeting TBD

Regular Monthly Board Meeting

This program will occur virtually on Zoom.  Registration is required.  A recording of the program will be shared with program registrants.  To register for this program please click on the “Register” button at the bottom of this page.

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In this program, we will explore the how and why to converting from lawn to natural garden, then touch on the practical preparation, research, design, management, and working with city inspectors and HOAs aspects involved in this conversion. In under one hour you’ll have the basic tools and strategies to begin your own further research and planning to reduce intensively managed lawn as well as invigorating older garden beds that often need more plants. 

Presenter Bio:

Benjamin Vogt is the author of the best-selling Prairie Up: An Introduction to Natural Garden Design, as well as A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future. His work has appeared in Dwell, Fine Gardening, Horticulture, Midwest Living, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. He manages the educational and design firm Prairie Up based in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

A signed copy of Prairie Up can be ordered at Nature and Garden Books by Benjamin Vogt.  Unsigned books can be ordered from your favorite bookseller.  If you shop from the Wild Ones Reading List Bookshop a portion of your purchase goes to support both Wild Ones and independently owned local bookstores. This contribution, at no additional cost to you, helps to support the Wild Ones mission but does not influence our reviews or recommendations. 

We will work with winter sowing techniques utilizing milk jugs