Meet Your Neighbors

Bob Strempel & Carla Schmakel:
Making Paradise from Scratch

In 1993, Bob Strempel and Carla Schmakel bought a home on a small lot in a subdivision in Round Lake Park, Illinois. All the topsoil and vegetation had been stripped from this former Lake County cornfield, replaced with only two inches of subsoil, which promptly turned into gravelly, clay hardpan after record spring rainfalls. The couple knew that plants could help them solve the lot’s excessive runoff problems. But the lack of soil was a daunting obstacle, considering that their long-term goal for the property was to create a wildlife refuge.

To begin, they composted donated fall oak leaves and lawn clippings with kitchen scraps. Worm castings added momentum, as did many small batches of compost hauled from a yard waste facility. After 12 years, they are still building up the soil, but now nature is doing much of the work.

Using only hand tools and abstaining from fertilizers or synthetic chemicals, Bob and Carla have nurtured a garden of native plants that supports at least 110 different species of insects and spiders, including 22 species of butterflies and skippers, as well as migrating, resident, and nesting birds. Their garden has twice been a destination for the annual Illinois Audubon Butterfly Garden Tour, and in 2000 it won first prize for “Wildlife Garden” in a contest held by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Botanic Garden.

The pair learned to grow vegetables organically years ago at a community garden near their Rogers Park apartment. With other influences, their gardening evolved. They credit Jack Shouba’s class at The Morton Arboretum with teaching them to identify native plants, and others from the restoration community — such as Joyce Proper, a long-time steward at Grant Woods — for inspiring their home landscape vision. Bob’s enjoyment of nature dates to childhood, however. “As a child, I used to go for long walks with my family through the Palos Preserves. That’s where I got the idea that communing with nature was fun.”

Bob, a retired piano tuner and record dealer, approaches gardening with the zeal of a collector. He documents with fascinating detail every insect, bird, and plant, which includes photographing as many species as he can. He records failed plantings, removals, and invasive species. “Plants like to associate with certain other plants,” he says. “They form communities. Carla sometimes says that when a plant fails it may have needed associates. So we’ve created nano-habitats of native forbs, shrubs, and trees in our garden.”

“We look to the Juneberries and wild plums and red osier dogwoods to provide flowers for the early pollinators — tiny wasps, bees, moths, midges, and syrphids — that feed the migrating spring birds,” says Bob. “We don’t need birdfeeders anymore because our garden offers birds plenty of native seed and insects to eat… We think ants are the best aerator for soil, and I would recommend coralberry as a shrub that is amazingly attractive to insects, including hummingbird moths and Argiope spiders.”

Bob’s intensity is complemented by Carla’s quiet gentleness. She teaches piano for a living and has a long list of credits as a plant illustrator and nature watercolorist. She discovered her artistic talent six years ago, after the garden had grown into a community, inspired by its shapes, textures, and colors.

Bob and Carla see their garden as much more than an isolated patch of beauty. Bob knows the exact straight-line distances from the 7,800-square-foot lot to each forest preserve within five miles. Their once barren yard has become a functional part of a critical life-support network. And, to their delight, it’s constantly evolving. “Gardeners are engineers who install an infrastructure of plants,” Bob says, “but then the workers — ants, insects, birds, animals — come in and maintain it as a community in perpetuity.”

—Rommy Lopat

Related Articles:

Unlock Your Yard! Getting Started with Native Plant Gardening, CW Spring 2002

The Native Garden Oasis, CW Spring 2004