Learn about spring ephemerals with West Chicago Garden Club April 25
The West Chicago Garden Club will host a program on spring ephemerals on Thursday, April 25, at St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Prince Crossing and Geneva Road.
Garden club member Ed Max is an avid organic gardener, a certified arborist and naturalist. He works as a landscape designer and owns and operates Max's Greener Places in the West Chicago/Winfield area. His blog of horticultural musings can be seen on at his website www.Maxlandscape.com.
Max is passionate about native floral and fauna, and utilizes native species in his design work, as well volunteering in natural areas on habitat restorations. He advocates for more use of native species as the populations of both native insects and native flora they depend upon are in dangerous decline.
He also leads hikes with Sierra Club, and is active with the Illinois Native Plant Society. His talk will be on native wildflowers, and spring colors in the Chicago area garden and woodlands, including "Spring Ephemerals."
At the next monthly, Marcie Kozlowski will offer a workshop on "Making a Hypertufa" on May 23. On June 27, they are planning a garden walk. July 25 will be the "President's Picnic." Carol Cichowski will speak on "Glorious Dahlias" on Aug. 22, and Pauline Briggs will present "Bulb Bingo" on Sept. 26.
The garden club has donated three pecan hickory trees, Carya illinoinensis, to the West Chicago Park District. There will be a planting ceremony in Reed Kepler Park on Arbor Day at 5 p.m. Friday April 26, in the Reed Kepler Park, South Arbor parking lot.
Stock up on natives, annuals, perennials, and vegetable seedlings at the club's plant sale during Blooming Fest from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, May 18, in downtown West Chicago.