Introduction
If you have walked through a Chicago park recently, you have probably noticed areas that are filled with wildflowers and native tall grasses. Some of these areas are carefully designed native gardens, and others are restored natural areas. Although they may look similar at first, they serve different purposes and are cared for in different ways. Understanding the difference helps us appreciate why both belong in the city.
Context
To provide some brief background information regarding why the city, partners, and neighbors are planting native plants around the city, let’s think back to before the city existed, when native plants covered the landscape. There were many different landforms, including prairies (meadows/open grasslands), woodlands, marshes, sand dunes along the lake, and savannas where scattered trees dotted the prairies. These are the places where our native plants evolved. Over the past two centuries, the region that we call Chicagoland has been changing from its “pre-settlement” character. It has been developing into a large metropolis with many suburbs, not to mention the rest of the state of Illinois, where agricultural development has been ongoing for the same period. This development prioritized the needs of the people living and moving here, replacing natural landscapes and the plants and animals in them with infrastructure and landscaping familiar to those settling the area. That meant the introduction and spread of plants from Europe, Asia, and other parts of the world, while simultaneously removing or replacing the natural plant species – “native plants”. Today, when you go outside, most of the plants around you are not native to the region or the continent. You may ask, why does it matter which plants are around us in our landscape?
A Broader Perspective
That is an important question with an important answer. Every part of the world has plants and animals that are indigenous there. They each have roles to play in the natural community, and they are adapted to the local circumstances, such as the precipitation, temperature, and seasonal changes. Together, the organisms interacting in a place are called the “natural community”. Intact communities have most or all of the members that have evolved there, such as plants, animals, microbes, etc. These organisms depend on each other as well as compete, creating complex, harmonious assemblages of organisms. In these intact communities, everyone has what they need, and the natural biodiversity of the region is supported through reciprocal relationships. A good example of this is the interaction between plants that produce berries or nuts for animals to eat, and in turn, the animals disperse the seeds packaged by the plants in those fruits, allowing plants to move around the landscape. Biodiversity is valuable because healthy ecosystems benefit people, but many conservationists also believe species have value simply because they exist. Native plant restoration projects of all kinds recognize both ideas.
Introducing native plant species to the city is an important practice in supporting local biodiversity, and the city of Chicago has been doing a wonderful job leading by example for other urban areas. Native plants can be used in different ways. As mentioned before, the two main ways are in “natural areas” and “native plant gardens”. There are many overlapping features and concepts involved in these two approaches, and several important differences. Both provide habitat (shelter and food) for biodiversity such as pollinators, birds, and wildflowers, as well as ecosystem services for people.
The table below summarizes the differences between native plant gardens and natural areas:
Native Plant Gardens
| Natural Areas |
Goal is to create an aesthetically pleasing, managed garden that provides food and shelter for local pollinators and birds | Goal is to restore larger tracts of land to functioning, self-sustaining ecosystems, supporting complex relationships between many organisms. |
Small, private or parkway property | Larger spaces, public property |
Can be an instant native plant community desired | Plant community desired develops over time |
Prescribed fire not currently allowed | Prescribed fire program growing |
Designed and styled gardens | Naturally developing plant communities |
Usually shorter native plants | Height of plants not a priority |
Native species mixed with traditional gardening varieties | Goal is all native plants |
Natural Areas
Natural Areas are spaces that are dedicated to nature and are managed as habitat, where food and shelter are prioritized over aesthetics. In practice, this means that natural areas are managed or planned more similarly to forest preserves and national parks, with different goals than a garden. Re-creating nature takes time, and the industry/process is referred to as “Restoration Ecology”. Ecology is the study of ecosystems, which includes both living and non-living features. Just like in a play, there are actors, and there is a stage. Ecologists study their interactions in nature. Restoration ecology seeks to help damaged ecosystems recover many of the plants, animals, and natural processes that once existed there. That means doing our best to recreate the play by restoring the stage and the actors present prior to the changes brought on by the development of the city and suburbs.
With such complete transformation of the region over the past 200 years, creating spaces for nature to thrive harmoniously with dense human populations begins with creating some physical space. Luckily for nature, Chicago has a lot of park space, and some portions of some parks in our beautiful city are dedicated to nature. They are being transformed into prairies, savannas, woodlands, and wetlands, and are carefully managed for ecosystem health.
Some spaces in parks are prone to flooding, or some other costly and unsightly trouble, are underused, or never used by anybody. Some of these spaces are candidates for natural area restoration for the benefit of local biodiversity. People in Chicago benefit as well if these spaces are chosen with intention. Natural areas are full of native plants, and those plants have deep root systems that absorb rainwater like a sponge, holding the water in the same location that it hits the ground. In a natural area during a storm, rainwater first hits the leaves of native plants, slowing the water down as it approaches the soil, where it meets porous, air- and root-filled ground that allows the water to penetrate many feet, storing it there for use by the plants. In contrast, rainwater that falls on streets, sidewalks, building rooftops, and even short-rooted turfgrass, like that in parks, generally moves sideways, where it flows to a gutter and then into the sewer system. This system can then be overburdened with the volume of water and ultimately backs up, as many readers have witnessed themselves. Natural areas are one healthy solution to this kind of rainwater management issue. By replacing or changing portions of turf grass areas in parks and impervious “hardscape” (concrete-like) infrastructure where unneeded, into natural areas where native plants can help store rainwater underground, these spaces provide a valuable service to the people of the city. When the flowers in these spaces bloom, they provide valuable resources to pollinators, and when the plants set seed, they feed local and migratory birds and their bird families. These are just some examples of the benefits of natural areas.
Another important aspect of natural areas for people to understand is how they are managed, because it is not gardening. There is no big rush to complete the natural community in planning and managing natural areas. The goal is to provide space for as many species of plants to thrive as possible and are appropriate for that area.
Generally, natural area creation in the city consists of:
- Choosing a location (relatively quick)
- Removing the vegetation that is present (relatively quick)
- Seeding in a diverse mix of native plant species (done each year in fall)
- Removing non-native species as the native plants establish (done throughout each year)
- Reintroducing the natural processes that native plants have evolved with (regularly)
Landscape fire is a natural occurrence on the Midwestern landscape, like rain, snow, and wind. However, in modern times, people have mostly stopped the natural fires of the region for many understandable reasons. Changing natural processes like this is common and has been done all over the world to support modern infrastructure and human needs. It is likely that people would decide to exercise control over other natural dynamics if they could, such as the snow, the winter, etc., but we can’t control everything.
What we can control, we generally do. One of those things in our region is landscape fire. However, native plant and animal communities have been evolving with fire for millions of years and are, therefore, adapted to the presence of this landscape dynamic. When it is removed, there are cascading consequences for the natural community.
Those consequences include declining plant diversity, changes to soil composition and health, and reduction of animal species due to changes in the plant community. There is a lot to unpack there, and we will do that unpacking in a subsequent blog post regarding the importance of fire. Readers hoping to understand natural areas management will enjoy such information, but for the topic here, it is sufficient to know that restoring both native plants and the ecosystem dynamics they evolved with in the city is important for healthy ecosystems.
Over time, usually a decade or so, seeding native species, removing non-native species, and conducting prescribed burns results in healthy, diverse, natural areas that serve as habitat for our local biodiversity and help with some stubborn urban infrastructure issues. Natural areas are small wilderness spaces in a big metropolis, and they enrich and restore the natural world here in Chicago. A short list of natural areas in Lincoln Park where you can get involved includes the Montrose Beach Dunes, Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary, North Pond Nature Sanctuary, Bill Jarvis Migratory Bird Sanctuary, and Osterman Beach Dunes. Outside of Lincoln Park, the most recent big news in Chicago Park District Natural Areas is the re-opening of Marian Byrnes Park this season. The reopening marks the completion of new boardwalks, shade pavilions, and interpretive signs for visitors to enjoy.
Nature Gardens
In addition to parks and natural areas, cities also have countless gardens that come in many forms. We have gardens just about everywhere, including on rooftops, in the center of boulevards, and at our homes. Plant species used traditionally in gardening are typically non-native plant species, but that is starting to change. Gardening practices are always rich with both traditional and novel approaches envisioned to evoke all flavors of emotion. Plants and their many forms are one of nature’s great gifts to the minds and hearts of people, and gardens serve as our canvases for sharing these gifts with each other. Leaves, stems, flowers, seeds, and fruits contribute to the majesty of abundance and the delicate perception of scarce beauty. We value these attributes of the plant world, and we fill our modern human habitats, our cities and suburbs, with myriad gardens.
Gardening with native plants has become a more frequent practice and has evolved significantly over the years. There are a few reasons for this that stand out. First, while not all the native plant species from any region are charismatic or otherwise desirable in the design and style fundamental to gardening, many are. The use of these species in gardens provides something different than the traditionally used plant species from other parts of the world. Many gardeners enjoy looking for something different. Luckily for them, about 2,000 plant species are native to the Chicago region and may be used by gardeners if the plants are available commercially.
Second, native plants are well adapted to the Chicago region for reasons described earlier. This makes them less “fussy” or difficult to keep healthy in our region, for the most part. There are always some plants that will be more difficult and others that will be easier to garden with; it is the same when gardening with native species. Adaptations such as deep roots and phenology (timing of emergence, flowering, etc.) are intimately choreographed over millennia with the conditions of the seasons and environment. Choosing plants native to Chicago for a Chicago garden is like opening a deep-dish pizza or Chicago-style hot dog joint in Chicago; you know there will be customers, and the product evolved here. Native pollinators and birds evolved with these plants, and they want to eat and use them.
Gardening with native plants helps to address the habitat loss crisis our expanding city and suburbs have caused for local biodiversity by re-planting habitat. Including native plants in our gardens increases the amount of suitable habitat for pollinators and birds.
Habitat Fragmentation
As cities expand, continuous habitat becomes broken into smaller pieces. Ecologists call this habitat fragmentation. Imagine a bumblebee trying to fly from one wildflower patch to another across roads, parking lots, and buildings. What was once one continuous landscape of wildflowers has become many isolated islands of habitat separated by novel obstacles. These separations reduce the amount of habitat, but they also reduce how connected the habitats are – habitat connectivity. This matters because what once was one population of insects or plants becomes many separate populations that no longer interact, and that has consequences for population health over the long term. Some habitat fragments may only have a few individuals of a species of plant or animal, and no way of getting to other populations to breed or cross-pollinate. Population decline follows through a process known as inbreeding depression, or reduced population health because of a limited gene pool. This leads to populations fitting poorly in their habitat and thus declining. Much of this has already happened in our region, and we can prevent it from continuing by creating more habitat connections.
Welcome back, Native Plants
When we garden with native plants, we reduce habitat fragmentation because we are creating habitat corridors through our own properties/gardens. This idea is described very well by the team that developed the Homegrown National Park concept. National Parks and State Parks serve as havens for the natural world in our modern landscape and are a point of pride for most Americans. Bringing the plants from local national and state parks, such as the Indiana Dunes National Lake Shore and Moraine Hills State Park, to your garden is kind of like bringing the park to you, or like living there! This is an important concept for biodiversity conservation that starts with imagining the culture of gardening benefiting both people and nature during a time when nature really needs us.
The management of nature gardens is approached differently from that of natural areas in the city. Where a natural area is a large public space set on a course toward greater biodiversity and ecological health over the long term, a gardener using native plants has a smaller space to consider and can move more quickly toward the plant community they want to see, with much less effort to fill the space of the garden.
Imagine using your shovel and gardening gloves to plant several acres of native plants to make a natural area versus a fraction of an acre to plant your city garden plot. One reason seeds are used in natural area restoration is because of scale; it is too resource-intensive to plant each individual plant to create a natural area, when seeds can do the same thing, just over a longer time.
Gardeners can create a smaller natural area faster. They can pick and choose where each species will go, incorporating design artistically. The biodiversity doesn’t care how it is arranged, for the most part, as long as the right plant is in the right place in terms of sunlight and soil moisture. To help native plants thrive in natural areas, it was mentioned that the natural ecosystem dynamics should be restored, especially landscape fire. Not many of us are accustomed to burning our gardens every spring or fall to encourage garden health, nor is this practice permitted in the city on private or parkway properties. However, some alternatives serve to promote the natural community. The most popular is mowing or cutting back the garden in the spring. This is also something that is done traditionally in gardening and, therefore, translates well to native plant gardening practices.
By removing the prior year’s plant stalks and other plant materials, as a landscape fire would, space is made for fresh growth. However, best practices incorporate balance, and it is important to leave some of the native plant material standing or piled up in a corner to allow insects such as butterflies, moths, and fireflies to emerge from their overwintering habitat in the stems and leaves of the native plants.
Pollinators and birds, to name a few representatives of local biodiversity, just need the plants and what they offer to them, and the plants just need the insects and birds and what they contribute to their lifecycles. By creating more connectivity throughout the city, the whole natural community becomes more complete, and the harmonious interactions multiply and strengthen.
As nature is restored to our gardens and parks, the story of declining local biodiversity begins to turn around. In a time when the Monarch Butterfly is listed as an endangered species, something that is eye-opening to many people, gardening with native plants is a meaningful part of the solution to helping many species of plants and animals recover and thrive again.
Creative landscape uses and designs that incorporate native plants in partnership with human engineering have the power to shift our impact on the local environment from negative to positive while providing ecosystem services and reducing costly externalities.
The Chicago Park District Natural Areas, native gardens, and the various preserve systems we are lucky to have around the Chicagoland area have inspired many worthy efforts based on the same principles. A few are cited below for your exploration.
The Lincoln Park Conservancy works with the Chicago Park District to maintain the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, a site that is regarded as a unique blend between a natural area and a nature garden. Caldwell, a Prairie Style landscape architect active throughout much of the 20th century, intended the Lily Pool to highlight plants and landscape features of the Midwest, and maintaining that vision is a priority for the community. Native plant species are carefully managed by the Conservancy staff, the Park District, and dedicated volunteers, like a nature garden. However, like a natural area, the Lily Pool will be managed with prescribed burning and seed mixes, as well. Open to the public from late April through November, the Lily Pool is a special place for nature in Chicago.
Native gardens and natural areas are complementary ideas. Natural areas restore functioning ecosystems across larger landscapes, while native plant gardens extend habitat into neighborhoods. Together, they reconnect pieces of the landscape that have been separated for generations. Every restored prairie, woodland, and wetland, and every native garden becomes another step toward a healthier Chicago for both people and wildlife.
Chicago Park District Nature Gardens
Chicago Park District Natural Areas
Volunteer in the Chicago Park District Natural Areas
City of Chicago Native and Pollinator Garden Resources
