Two efforts seek to improve human interaction with environment
Volunteers hope to make the Barrington area a source of knowledge and materials for those want to use gardening to help the environment.
Two separate initiatives are starting up aimed at fulfilling those goals.
A new nonprofit group called Smart Farm of Barrington is in the final stages of negotiation with the village of Lake Barrington to use a portion of the Freier Farm on Kelsey Road as an educational garden.
And Barrington-area stalwart Citizens for Conservation is working with Friends of Spring Creek Forest Preserves on a program called Native Seed Gardeners.
"Both goals are not antagonistic to each other," CFC board member and gardener Meredith Tucker said. "Both organizations want to help the planet."
The two efforts also will provide ideal activities for yet another local initiative in the Lake Zurich and Barrington areas called No Child Left Indoors, said Dicie Hansen, technical adviser to Smart Farm.
"Our goal is to be an educational resource garden in the local area," Hansen said. "I've been growing vegetables all my life."
Though called a "smart farm," the site is more likely to look like a large garden as it won't be devoted to just one or two crops. Rather, organizers hope to show local gardeners how to successfully grow as many as 50 or 60 different things, Hansen said.
A major goal is to show how to make a garden environmentally sustainable, using water wisely and taking an integrated approach to pest management to limit the use of pesticides as much as possible, Hansen said.
"My philosophy is you should learn from an experience and have fun doing it, or you might as well be doing something else," she laughed.
Lake Barrington Village President Kevin Richardson is hopeful the village will be able to host this effort.
"They hope to make it a showcase for schoolchildren, and the produce from the site will be donated to local food pantries," he said. "Fifty years ago, Lake County was still primarily agricultural. This helps connect us back and maintain a connection with our heritage."
For its separate initiative, Citizens for Conservation initiative is seeking volunteers to plant rare native seeds on their property so that new seeds may be yielded and donated back in hopes of helping to reestablish those plants.
By visiting the Web site nativeseedgardeners.org or calling CFC at (847) 382-7283, those interested can get in touch with a coordinator who will tell them the best plants for their properties.
CFC has had much success in the past re-establishing other native species, but these will require even greater nurturing to restore true biodiversity to the area, Tucker said.
"You could have 100 acres of little blue stem and 100 acres of big blue stem, but that doesn't make for a healthy ecosystem," she said. "It is only the diversity that makes that healthy. If we could bring back even a few of these plants, wildlife would benefit as well."