Get Your Garden and Trees Ready for Spring
By Mary Jo Viero As winter slowly relinquishes its grip, gardeners across the community are eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring. However, preparing your garden for the upcoming season requires careful planning and attention to detail. From pruning to soil preparation, selecting the right plants, and caring for trees, here are some essential tips from […]
BAPA Gardening Guide: Making the Best of Shade and Small Spaces
By Tim Moran As is the case with neighborhoods across Chicago, gardening lovers in Beverly/Morgan Park have often been challenged with how to make the best of shady areas and small spaces. It’s an inquiry that Gael Mennecke, president of the Garden Club of Morgan Park-Beverly Hills, has fielded on and off throughout her […]
Leave the Leaves
By Kathy Figel In Beverly/Morgan Park we are treated to several weeks of fall color, especially this year. My preference with leaves would be to capture them on a canvas with rich oil paints on a perfect autumn day. Then came mid-October’s gusts followed by heavy, constant rain stripping many trees that otherwise shed closer […]
Not Put Your Garden to Bed Yet!
By Kathy Figel September. Are we putting the garden to bed? Nope, not quite yet. Sometimes in the fall, flowers’ colors are their most radiant. If you continue to “deadhead,” the flowers in your garden will deliver in all their glory. In addition, our Monarch butterflies still need the pollinators as they get ready for […]
Now is the Time to Divide Perennials and Conquer Weeds
By Kathy Figel What is a weed? “A plant whose virtues have never been discovered,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson’s distain for weeds was documented. Little is written about the poet actually removing the unwanted plants on his hands and knees. He was probably more like us – procrastinator gardeners, with a few plants yet […]
July Gardening
By Kathy Figel July is here already, and it is soooo hot, right? That’s what your plants are saying as well. What can we do to keep our veggies from burning, the saplings from drooping and the soil from cracking without spending a fortune on water? According to industry experts, covering soil with mulch – […]
Battling Invasive Plants
By Kathy Figel What really aggravates me as a gardener is an invasive phragmite plant called Giant Reed. This species of grass is native to Illinois and very aggressive at the Edna White Garden. Giant Reed habitats include wet prairies, marsh areas, margins of ponds and rivers, drainage ditches and edges of poorly drained fields. […]
GETTING YOUR GARDEN STARTED TAKES TIME
By Kathy Figel We live in a neighborhood where if you want a garden, you can have one as long as you can do the work or pay someone else to do it. But that’s not always easy. Sometimes we have an idea that is impossible to recreate: Like the garden roses you saw on […]
Gardeners Exchange Extravaganza
Growing your own food can nourish spirits, minds and bodies. We can garden to make nutritious food affordable and to connect with the earth. Bring yourself, your extra seeds, your wisdom, and gardening equipment you no longer need to the Gardeners Exchange Extravaganza, Sat., Mar. 26, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., Morgan Park Presbyterian […]
A few things you should know about tree care
By Anne Alt Many homeowners see landscapers working around trees and may assume what they are doing is correct. Landscapers usually are not well educated in tree care. There are many local examples of two landscaping practices that are bad for tree health: volcano mulching and raised beds around tree trunks. Landscapers often pile mulch around tree trunks in deep mounds. Professional foresters call this volcano mulching. It can cause rot and disease, shortening the life of a tree. Mulch should […]