Mount Prospect homeowners cultivate their native roots

Linda Wilcoski said no apologies are needed for walking on her lawn.

“Please, kill my grass,” said the Mount Prospect resident, whose Lincoln Avenue garden was one of five featured Sunday during Go Green Mount Prospect’s Native Garden Tour.

This is Wilcoski’s first year trying a native plant garden, and it didn’t take long for a patch of ground previously covered by grass to start sprouting purple hoary vervain.

Wilcoski considers her garden a work in progress, with other plantings including nodding onion, monkey flower and foxglove beardtongue.

“I thought this would be a good example for people to see what you can get the first year,” she said.

Wilcoski pointed out the value of native plants as hangouts for pollinators.

“If you think about it, if you don’t have any bees, you don’t have any food,” she said.

Another advantage is native plants are drought tolerant, said Mount Prospect resident Nick Pizzo, who operates a native plant nursery and was helping Wilcoski host Sunday.

“Some of the roots on these species go down 13, 14 feet,” he said. “This was what was meant to be here. When you put in turf grass, it is essentially sterile. Nothing lives in it.”

By contrast, he said, you can walk over to the hoary vervain and find three different species of bees.

Among those taking part in Sunday’s tour was Arlington Heights resident Russ Lijewski.

“I actually have a small native garden in our backyard,” he said. “I want to see what other people are doing.”

While Wilcoski’s garden is just getting underway, the garden at the I Oka Avenue home of James Hoffman and Giovannina Penze is lush with native plantings after only two years.

“I got into it even before we owned a house,” Hoffman said. “We were living in the city and learned about it through friends and organizations I volunteered with.”

When the couple moved to the suburbs more than three years ago, the yard was covered with giant yew bushes. The bushes were ripped out, and the yard went mostly native.

If one of the goals in planting natives is to attract bee pollinators, their garden has accomplished that mission in spades. Visitors could find bees roaming among the bee balm, the Ozark bluestar and the black-eyed Susan. Other curiosities included a great golden sand digger, butterflies, cabbage moths and a great black wasp.

Kyle Romberg’s garden on Dresser Drive has been growing for about 15 years. It’s a testament to his dedication, but also the resilience of the plants.

“We probably started like most people do, with potted plants and a little bit of a seed mix,” he said. “Over time, the plants kind of decide which ones want to grow in your conditions, and it sort of ebbs and flows over the years.”

Big blue stem is prominent, along with black-eyed Susan, prairie coreopsis and wild bergamot.

He said he also grows flowers and vegetables, but a prairie is more freeform and appeals to people who are more comfortable with a bit of chaos.

szalusky@dailyherald.com