In Their Own Backyard

The Riverwoods Preservation Council goes literary to preserve a wilderness (very) close to home.

By Lori Rotenberk

At first glance, the sign bearing the name “Riverwoods” might be taken literally — a marker to denote that you are entering the woods, perhaps a forest preserve. But tucked here and there, hidden among the trees, are small homes that seem to have grown in place, blending in with the natural surroundings in this southern Lake County enclave.

To many of its 4,000-plus residents, much of the village of Riverwoods, Illinois, is a natural paradise, appealing, at least in part, for what it is not. The absence of streetlights lets in the starlight. Many roads are single-laned, some only recently paved. Lacking a bustling town center, Riverwoods’ village hall is an old log cabin that once served as a Boy Scout camp.

“After it rains in Riverwoods, the earth and woods smell wonderful,” explains Sue Auerbach, who has lived in the community for more than three decades. “All of my windowsare like paintings of the seasons. It is one of the few places a person can live that is close to the city and yet be so opposite.”

This is how Auerbach and a group of concerned citizens would like it to remain, so they’ve reached out to neighbors in a novel way — by writing a book. Last December, more than 1,300 copies of In Our Own Backyard: A Guide to the Pleasures, Possibilities and Responsibilities of Living in Harmony with Nature were mailed to Riverwoods households. The hefty book is the product of more than three years of research and writing by five directors who lead the nonprofit Riverwoods Preservation Council (RPC), with support from many others.

“Our goal,” explains RPC president Joan Becker, who has lived in the community for 17 years, “is to get people to understand their land, to get to know their woods like they would get to know their best friend, their good neighbor.”

“When I first moved to Riverwoods from Chicago in 1991, it was like dying and going to heaven,” recalls Becker. “And I still feel that way. It’s cooler and quieter here in the summer. It is bucolic and beautiful. It is like National Geographic outside my window everyday. Why, right now I am looking at a red-tailed hawk.”

In just a few short months, the 128-page book, with in-depth information on everything from the history of the area to learning native plants and how to live with wildlife, has caused many residents to see the village from a new perspective.

“The book is wonderful,” says Riverwoods resident Margie Kaul. “I had a new neighbor move in the week after it was distributed and I gave him mine. It is full of information on how unique it is here. I have two acres that I’ve started to restore, and the guide makes the restoration much easier.”

Ethel Untermeyer, who came to Riverwoods more than 50 years ago, still lives in the same house on the same ten wooded acres. (Many also know her as the central figure in founding the Lake County Forest Preserves.) She says she’s proud of the RPC for urging the town’s residents to become good stewards of their land. “I have spent most of my life working to keep Riverwoods natural, and it is not an easy job,” she says “Riverwoods is changing, and I’m grateful the RPC came forward to wake everyone before more of the natural environment is lost.”

Even Riverwoods mayor William Kaplan, a real estate broker who sells homes and property in the village, says the guide is “great and will be one of the major ways to prevent further clear cuts.” Development, he adds, “is inevitable and some change is good. But I think it is important for the village to keep a minimum on the loss of trees and understory.”

In Our Own Backyard was a labor of love. RPC members met twice weekly at one another’s homes to toil over research and drafts. The more they delved into the history and biodiversity of the region, the more they learned.

The group discovered, for instance, how the Des Plaines River, by buffering the land the village now occupies from most prairie fires, helped establish the dominant woodland habitat of today. (Roughly three-quarters of the village was historically wooded, and most remains so today.) The researchers found that their own properties, as well as several small natural lots and neighboring Ryerson Woods, held 150-year-old oaks and hickories, sugar maple, blue beech, and hackberries, with understory species such as white trillium, blue cohosh, and May apple. They became more conscious of the riverside character of their home — a place of seasonal wetlands alive with the sound of chorus frogs — and of their land’s role as habitat for more than humans.

RPC’s Greg Mancuso, who has lived in Riverwoods since 1987, says the most valuable gem he discovered is people of like minds. “We all love living in Riverwoods and we all love our land,” he says. “But suddenly, through doing the book and working with the RPC, we began to hear from people who feel the same way. They started to come forward. I learned that there are people who have been quietly doing restoration work. People who have been trying to grow patches of native plants — trillium or ferns or grasses — in small fenced-in areas.”

The fences are to keep out the deer, which overpopulate the area and browse out much unprotected foliage. But the deer are only one of the challenges the native habitat faces.

Like so many metropolitan communities, Riverwoods has also become attractive to developers. As residents age or uproot, many of the small homes are being razed and replaced by much larger brick or stone houses. Over the past two decades, Riverwoods, established in 1949 by steel magnate Edward L. Ryerson and incorporated in 1959, has developed into four distinct regions. South Riverwoods remains its most sparsely populated and most densely wooded, but its large lots, most from two to four acres, make it a prize for builders.

With development has come clear-cutting. A village ordinance allows for 30 percent of woodlands on a property to be cleared. Some clearing has made room for large lawns, backyards with decks, swimming pools, and tennis courts. Patches of wetland have been filled in. And other natural acreages have been inundated by invasive plants.

So the work of the RPC continues along many lines. “Now that we’ve completed the guide, the scientific research begins,” Mancuso says. “We will be embarking on a study of woodland health, whether it can be improved, and if it should be improved, how we might do it. Should we embark on an aggressive tree-planting effort? Begin an endangered species program? Cultivate and preserve wetlands?”

In the meantime, the RPC will continue to hold lectures on gardening and preservation. Director Sue Auerbach hopes that a natural garden recently expanded in front of the village hall will help residents not only identify what grows on their property but also inspire them about planting.

“The RPC’s message is simple,” says Becker. “Take care of your land. It is in your best interests and those of your children. The woods provide habitat for raptors who control rodents. Wetlands and deep roots of woodland plants will keep your house from flooding. The trees in your woods will clean your air. All things in nature work together as a system.”

The RPC says it isn’t against change — the group simply hopes to hold on to what, for them, makes Riverwoods such a good place to live. “What I see happening,” says Mancuso, “is Riverwoods becoming a better version of itself. We inherited a beautiful environment. Now, perhaps, we can make it a better place for people and a better place for nature, and along the way show what community action can do to make a more balanced environment.”