It’s been such a glorious growing season that some gardeners may find themselves with an embarrassment of plant riches. Vigorous perennials that thrived and multiplied well may now seem a bit over-stuffed.
Digging out fall divisions is a great way to reduce the crowding and ensure future success, but what to do with all the excess?
Along comes a prime opportunity to share the extras from your own garden with people who aim to beautify little patches of the city on a tight budget. It’s the fifth annual City Wide Plant Divide, a sort of swap meet for gardeners that spans the first two weekends in October.
“There’s a lot of plant material that goes unused at this time of year,” says Henry Henderson, the city’s environment commissioner, whose department oversees the program. “With the Plant Divide, we want people to be able to have an effect on the community and make great use of their extra plant material.”
Rather than toss those extra clumps of daylilies, hostas or phlox into the compost pile or jam them into an already full bed, Henderson urges, share them with people for whom nursery prices are prohibitive. Some 130 community groups, from block clubs to school councils and church greening committees, sign up to receive plants that they then can install in vacant lots and other spots in urgent need of a touch of color.
“Gardeners who participate in the Plant Divide make life so much better for some people who don’t see beauty very often in their neighborhood,” says Eunice Drazba, the facilities director of St. Leonard’s House, a West Side halfway house for men returning to normal life from prison.
St. Leonard’s has a perennial garden stocked with purple coneflowers, Russian sage, hostas and other plants, all collected during various City Wide Plant Divide programs from generous gardeners.
Temporary residents of the facility, Drazba says, “get a lot out of the time they spend sitting on those benches in the garden.”
Residents and staff work in the garden.
Colorful cleanup
Henderson believes the dozens of little scraps of garden that have sprung up in Chicago’s low-income neighborhoods as a result of the program are valuable for more than their colors.
“They aid in cleaning up the city air and making these neighborhoods healthier places to live,” he says. “In some lots, they discourage gang members from hanging around, or illegal dumpers from spoiling the lot. They turn the space into a civic benefit, as opposed to a burden.”
Here’s how the Plant Divide works:
– Gardeners who want to donate divisions (or bulbs, shrubs or any other excess plant material) must register by Oct. 2. Call 312-744-8691 to receive a registration form in the mail; or pick up the form at North Park Village Nature Center, 5801 N. Pulaski Rd., or the Chicago Department of the Environment, 30 N. LaSalle St., 25th floor. (The form describes how to label and package your donations.)
– Drop off contributions at one of three sites: North Park Village Nature Center; the offices of Greencorps Chicago (a joint effort of the city and the University of Illinois Cooperative Extension Service that is behind many of the city’s greening efforts), 2309 S. Keeler Ave.; or St. Ailbe Church, 9100 S. Stony Island Ave. Contributions will be accepted 4 to 8 p.m. Oct. 2; 1 to 5 p.m. Oct. 3; 9 a.m. to noon Oct. 4. Donors get a receipt that they can redeem the following week for as many plants as they contributed.
– If you want to pick up plants and are registered as a participant in the program, go to any of the three drop-off sites at 10 a.m. Oct. 11. Horticulturists with Greencorps Chicago will give 30-minute talks on how to install and maintain plants in autumn.
Neighborhood help
Gardening experts used to say that early bloomers should be divided in fall and late bloomers in spring, but it’s now accepted that almost any perennial can be divided at this time of year, as long as the divisions are replanted properly and mulched enough to protect their shallow roots in winter. Daylilies, peonies, bee balm and hostas are especially amenable to fall division.
Can a few blooming perennials really solve anything?
South Austin resident Ernestine Derden believes they can. Several members of the South Austin Coalition have picked up plants at the Plant Divide and installed them in trash-strewn vacant lots and other eyesores.
“Then, instead of throwing stuff into these vacant lots, people see the gardens and stop themselves,” Derden says.
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Does your garden need a make-over? The Home section will ask several local landscape designers to draw up plans for a site that needs help. Yours could be that garden. Send one full-view photo or a hand-drawn map of the yard and a brief statement (no more than 100 words) on your goals for your yard–i.e., space for kids, a soothing evening retreat, traffic-stopping floral displays–to the Home section by Oct. 1.
If your garden is selected, we’ll publish several experts’ suggestions for the yard. The landscape designers will not provide, except for a fee, any plants, installation or further advice beyond what is published in the article.
Send to: Garden Make-over, Home section, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611.
