Biodiversity. Conservation. Ecosystems. Students often study these topics but usually associate them with distant tropical rain forests and barrier reefs, not the Midwest. Knowing this, Chicago area educators are turning students' sights to their own backyards. With a hands-on, interdisciplinary approach, teachers are using school gardens to introduce students to the wonders of our region's native plant and animal communities. Many of these gardens proudly feature native plants, showcased in restored or recreated plant communities. They are tended by people who cherish Chicago's wilderness and hope to inspire the next generation to understand, appreciate, and protect the ecosystems of our region. Join us as we explore five local gardens.

Palos West School, Palos Park
Tucked on a sunny plot behind the rambling school, Palos West School's two-year-old Illinois prairie garden has doubled in size since its creation. Woodchip paths wander between the beds, bounded by handpainted rocks. Established prairie grasses and flowers, including big and little bluestem, purple coneflower, and coreopsis, are joined by newly planted black-eyed Susan, swamp milkweed, and pale coneflower. Soon a bird feeder and signs along the paths will complement the plants. These all delight garden coordinator Debi Pope, but the crowning glory of her garden is the children.

"They are out there everyday, observing the earthworms, spotting the toad, following the butterflies," exudes Pope. "This is what our garden is about. It's kids discovering nature, not teachers talking."

Pope has found many ways to weave the prairie garden into the curriculum. From social science discussions on sod houses to science units on life cycles of plants and animals, the garden provides a springboard for many lessons. Each month, armed with binoculars, her students take a nature walk, beginning in their own bit of prairie and trekking through a slough behind their school.

"Some children have never walked through the woods, so they are amazed when I point out the diversity of plant and animal life — reeds and cattails, geese, beavers, and diving ducks," exclaims Pope. "In the winter, we augered the ice above the muskrats' den, lay down, and tried to hear them breathing. We saw mouse tracks in the snow and made bark rubbings."

Photos from left: A student takes detailed plant observations at Kerkstra Middle School; Waters School's colorful sign proudly announces its garden; kids and families tend garden plots at Waters School; a Kerkstra student checks out a native milkweed. [Click any image to see a larger view.]

G. Kerkstra Middle School, Oak Forest
"It's important to show kids that the typical plants they are used to seeing have wild counterparts," asserts eighth-grade teacher Sue Law. "When I discuss the Linnaean system of naming genus and species, it's helpful to be able to compare a hybrid rose to a native rose."

That insight and a dose of reality drove Law's dual design for the garden at the G. Kerkstra Middle School in Oak Forest. "I originally planned to make the whole garden 'wild' but came up with a dual design that would have a more typical garden look," explains Law. "I felt my school board might not want a 'messy' wild garden."

Located in the school's center courtyard, the garden is surrounded by classrooms. Day lilies, a dwarf apple tree, hybrid grasses, and cultivated varieties of sunflower and coreopsis bloom in the traditional section. In the "wild" section grow native lilies, a pin oak tree, little bluestem, big bluestem, Indian grass, purple coneflower, wild indigo, native sunflowers, and native coreopsis.

Law uses the science unit on plant reproduction as a springboard for involvement in the garden. Students choose a perennial to observe throughout the year, drawing, measuring, researching, and writing in their "Nature Observation" book. In the process, they become aware of the natural patterns of weather, as well as the patterns of plant and animal activity.

"Some of our suburban kids have never interacted with plants and flowers before. Observations of nature are important experiences to help citizens become responsible caretakers of the Earth," believes Law. "Whether the students become as crazy about plants as their teacher is not important," she continues. "Small special moments happen every time we go outside, captured in the cool smell of native mountain mint, the soft touch of lamb's ear, or the excitement when we see the first peek of purple crocus through the snow."

Northside College Preparatory High School, Chicago
"Many of our students don't perceive the Midwest as being beautiful or having biodiversity. They equate conservation with the rainforest, not this area," notes Antoinette Geraghty, biology and environmental science teacher at Northside College Prep. "They consider prairie plants weeds."

As faculty coordinator of the prairie gardens at Northside Prep, Geraghty is working with colleagues to correct that misperception. Environmental science and biology students use prairie plants to learn taxonomy, perform plant pigment and nectar analysis, and conduct research. "Values education" comes into play, as students are encouraged to understand, value, and preserve the prairie, and to work with people from other backgrounds.

Planted in and around a large water detention basin behind the school, the garden features wetland plants — common water horehound, great blue lobelia, cardinal flower, and spotted Joe Pye weed — as well as sedges and prairie plants. Mosaic benches created by the ceramics class will be installed in the Hannah Madvig Memorial Garden. And the adjacent Celestial Garden will feature native plants as well as a concrete circle serving as a huge sundial. Inlaid with tile mosaics featuring astronomical myths, the garden will be used to teach mythology, Shakespeare, foreign languages, art, science, math, and culture.

Students build a path through a prairie-in-progress beside the Chicago River at Northside Preparatory High School.

Making these dreams come true requires extensive resources, observes Northside Funding Coordinator Chris Olsen. Fortunately, Olsen already has lined up funding from a variety of sources including a contribution from Norwood Builders, a Health and Human Services learning grant, a BP Amoco Com-munity Garden grant, and a $10,000 donation from Friends of Northside, a parent fundraising group. Within the school, support comes from the history, art, science, English, and physical education departments, and even the library. The native landscaping group Wild Ones originally conceived the project, and experts from The Field Museum, Adler Planetarium, Chicago Park District, and Chicago Arts Partnership in Education have all played consulting roles.

"We have support at every level, from city agencies, to our administration, to faculty, to students, parents and even from the community," observes Olsen. "Everyone works together and that's the way it should be."

Waters School, Chicago
"Caring for the land where we live gives me a deeper appreciation for life, all of life," says Pete Leki, ecology program coordinator at Waters School. "I think parents and students, too, experience an eerie sense of our past when they walk underneath these great bur oaks on land that once was the bed of the Chicago River. For me, it's a powerful feeling."

For eight years, the garden at Waters School also has been moving students, teachers, and even the North Center community. Organized by Leki, the sprawling garden fills the southern portion of a city block. Four huge oaks shade the extensive prairie, woodland, and savanna native plant communities that form the perimeter of the garden. Students from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade tend raised garden plots of vegetables and flowers, while local families maintain more than 30 plots in the Community Garden.

With the help of a teacher, Waters School students compare cultivated lilies (foreground) and plants of the native savanna (background).

Ever since the garden program began, it has drawn depth from a powerful source — the nearby Sauganash Prairie Grove. As part of the popular Mighty Acorns program, Waters School students explore and study the preserve, where Leki is volunteer co-steward. They collect data, make observations, report trends they discover in the woods and prairies, and practice stewardship by removing invasive plant species. Younger kids learn to appreciate the diversity of savanna life as they note the differences between wildflowers they encounter.

With the lessons of Sauganash in mind, students observe and care for newly familiar species in the school's natural areas. They've also helped to plant a local riverbank with the group Riverside Neighbors. Students even assist in cultivating rare native plants at the school, some of which produce seeds to contribute to the restoration of forest preserves along the Chicago River's North Branch. All of these activities deepen the school's science program, says Leki, noting that the program integrates writing and art as well.

When the school expands next year, the garden will grow with it. As part of its watershed curriculum, the school will jettison asphalt playgrounds in favor of green space, explains Leki. "We want to create a wetlands garden with runoff rainwater and extend the native plantings around the entire school property."

Christian Ebinger School, Chicago
The grounds of Christian Ebinger School, on Chicago's far northwest side, feature a butterfly prairie garden, a perennial flower garden, a strawberry patch, a vegetable garden, and even a garden designed after an American Indian myth.

Gardening is a school-wide pursuit at Ebinger, involving students from kindergarten through eighth grade and inspiring participation from a broad community of teachers, entire families, and even the school principal. Working with their teachers and Chicago Botanic Garden volunteers, classes grow vegetables, herbs, and native grasses in indoor "GrowLabs" and transplant them to tiered beds adjacent to the school's main entrance.

"The kids are so excited to go outside. It's a hands-on learning experience that combines all of language arts, reading, writing, science, and even social studies," says Lori Plier, a fourth-grade teacher and school garden coordinator.

Ebinger's garden started almost five years ago as part of the School Garden Initiative (SGI), an offshoot of Chicago's Campus Parks Program. Through the SGI, Ebinger and 50 other schools received faculty training, curriculum programs such as GrowLab, plant materials, and on-site support from the SGI coalition members, including the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, the Chicago Park District, and the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.

"One of our goals is to make the Ebinger school community a brighter, cleaner, safer place," says Plier. And they're doing it — "One flower, one gardener at a time."