Birds, Bees & Butterflies: A Native Garden Tour

We are back to an in-person event in 2021! Join us for a tour of lovely, color-filled gardens in Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park and Berwyn during our Birds, Bees & Butterflies Native Garden Tour July 24, 2021 from 1 to 5 p.m.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN: We’re celebrating the year of the Butterfly! Meet eight passionate and knowledgeable home gardeners who have been experimenting with and observing butterfly habitat and native plants for many years. They’ll give you guided overviews of their gardens and answer your specific questions about native gardening, as well as sustainable landscaping, edible gardening, D-I-Y-ing it vs. hiring designers, and urban homesteading, complete with chicken coops. Whether you’re a beginning gardener or have more soil between your toes than you care to reveal, you’ll walk away with practical, hands-on information and tips you can apply to your own yard.

COST: This program is $10 for West Cook Wild Ones members and $15 for non-members. Members receive discount when purchasing tickets for non-members. Kids attend for free! Become a member-Join here.

TOUR MAP: Ticket holders will receive a tour map two days before the event. We recommend biking or driving; the locations are spread among four nearby communities this year.

COVID-19 SAFETY MEASURES: Each garden will have a separate entrance and exit, to encourage social distancing.

JOIN THE MOVEMENT! The Year of the Butterfly is a local effort to bring awareness about how to support healthy habitat for butterflies and other pollinators. This tour is one of dozens of activities happening this summer in and around the Village of Oak Park, Illinois. At this tour, you’ll also learn about our fall native tree and shrub sale, where you can purchase butterfly-supporting plants at affordable prices. Finally, join our West Cook Wildlife Corridor: More than 800 gardeners in the near-west suburbs have pledged to grow native plants in support of it. You can, too! Growing native plants is a rewarding family activity. Learn about and help nurture the plants and animals that have lived here for thousands of years.

BENEFITS OF NATIVE GARDENING: Discover how affordable, beautiful, and exciting gardening with native plants can be! Native gardens are high-performance, lower-maintenance gardens that bring huge benefits to a home landscape: they eliminate the need for poisonous pesticides or expensive commercial fertilizers, reduce home energy consumption, help reduce flooding after storms, and decrease the need for sprinklers and other outdoor water use. In addition, growing a large native garden is a powerful way to combat climate change by helping capture carbon dioxide from the air and storing it in your soil. And perhaps most importantly, by growing native plants, you can provide essential habitat for birds, bees, butterflies and threatened pollinators. Habitat loss is among the primary factors driving population declines of important local and migratory species. Every additional native plant garden, no matter how small, can help preserve this biodiversity.

PRESENTERS: West Cook Wild Ones and the Interfaith Green Network are proud to present this in-person garden tour.

Host or Publisher Wild Ones West Cook