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The Start of Our Unique Resource Base

Oswego and several adjacent small towns in Kendall County are experiencing well documented, unparalleled urban growth. To help preserve some green space, the Oswegoland Park District developed its natural resources department in 2004 and soon found that it needed some fundamental assets to launch a conservation program. A greenhouse needed to grow native plants was an essential component to the department's goals. But locating and then building a new park facility that would include a greenhouse would be a highly complicated venture.

Oswego High School has a permanent greenhouse and a curriculum that teaches various horticulture classes. In the fall of 2004, the park district approached Oswego High with the idea of renting greenhouse space for propagation purposes. Instead, the high school offered the space for free: one hurdle cleared.

But, the district also was short on community volunteers, so staff then approached the high school horticulture instructor with the idea of using the horticulture students to assist with native seed processing, storage and propagation. This was, in effect, not only looking at the horticulture students as an in-class source of volunteers, but was a way to incorporate a park-district initiated conservation element into the classroom horticulture curriculum.

What ultimately evolved out of the necessity to have a place to grow prairie plants was a three season experiential education program where the Oswego High School horticulture classes would participate in actual restoration work in their own community.

In the fall of 2005, the district ventured into Oswego East High School with the same proposal. Ultimately, the administrations of both high schools adopted the program whole-heartedly.

In the fall, students assist park district staff with the collection of native prairie, wetland and woodland seed. These same fall classes then assist staff with the processing, labeling and the storage of seed over the winter. The winter classes assist park district staff with the important task of prairie plant propagation and with invasive plant removal.

An Oswego East High School horticulture class cleans and processes native prairie seeds.

An Oswego East High School horticulture class plants along the Morgan Creek watershed.

Plainfield South service learning students remove invasive species along the Waubonsie Creek.

Cost Savings, Volunteerism and Real Work Experience

The students essentially grow approximately 75 percent of the plant material that is used for restoration work during the following spring and summer. The spring classes then assist staff with planting the very plants started by the fall and winter classes in district restoration sites and also assist with further invasive plant removal. In 2007, the park district saved more than $12,000 on native plug material that would have come out of the fiscal budget. The horticulture students propagated more than 300 flats of native prairie, wetland and woodland plants in their respective greenhouses. Adding to this total was a savings of more than $20,000 from collected bulk seed that was later broadcast seeded after prescribed burns. For the 2008 growing season, the district worked with horticulture classes to produce more than 100 species of native prairie seed in the form of plants or bulk seed.

Park district staff, high school students and high school instructors work side by side in the field completing all these tasks. The volunteer hours spent by these classes can be measured in many ways:

1. As service hours for the students.
2. As volunteer hours for in-kind grant funding.
3. As volunteer hours put to community enhancement.
4. As real world student work experience.
5. As a means to create an awareness, respect and appreciation of our local environment that the students will carry with them a lifetime.

Another often hidden benefit is the fact these students are out making these positive changes in the public's eye, adding to their reputation, as well as to the positive reputations of their schools and their park district.

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Boulder Hill Elementary students plant native flora and clear invasives along the Fox River.

Younger, But no Less Enthusiastic, Partners

A similar partnership has been formed with the Oswego elementary and middle schools. As part of the goal to make greenway connections throughout the district and add natural area classrooms on school grounds, the Oswegoland Park District staff approached some of the schools that were situated on large tracts of open space, some adjacent to the district's natural areas. The idea was to begin to replace turf grass with native vegetation. This project would realize several benefits including:

1. Bringing the prairie, wetlands and woodlands of Illinois into the school yard.
2. Providing natural areas for students to explore and experience while applying this experiential activity to various aspects of the class curriculum.
3. Connecting district natural areas in the proximity to the school's natural areas, thereby strengthening and lengthening these fragmented urban wild places.
4. Providing additional native seed collecting sources for the district.
5. Using community residents as volunteer stewards to assist their own children with the development of these sites.

In 2007, three schools committed to start restoration projects with the students planting all the plant material. Park staff did the field preparations. In 2008, two more schools joined the effort, one of which has the potential to connect to a nearby 90-acre wetland restoration. These students will, in time, be able to walk out of the school and enter a natural world unknown in most urban, cookie-cutter school campus environments.

Park district staff members have gone into the schools to instruct the teachers on plant propagation, and they have passed that knowledge on to their classes. Students from two schools have collected native seed from their prairies and have begun growing prairie plants for their own sites.

Again, one of the more pronounced dynamics from the association between the park district and these schools is that the public is able to view the process.

Why We Do this Work

People often think of park districts as units of local government that have the mission of providing recreational opportunities and conserving natural resources. But another component of the mission is

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to improve the quality of life for the people of the community. While it's a stretch to call any park district a social service agency, there are times when a park district such as Oswegoland is in a position to help people with more immediate and fundamental needs.

For example, one pre-school in our area services a significant low income, at-risk population. Nearly every child at this school comes from a household in which both parents work, and many of those parents need to hold down two jobs. It's no wonder that parental participation in

Students from Ira Jones Middle School in Plainfield plant raised bed gardens of prairie plants behind the Oswegoland Park District administrative office.

school activities is, at best, minimal. Even though the pre-school has mandated expectations of ten hours per year of parent/child participation in school events, these hours are often never met. Another outgrowth of this economic hardship is that the children of these pressed-for-time parents have substandard diets. Many have never seen fresh produce.

The Oswegoland Park District staff and pre-school staff met to brainstorm ideas on how to turn their school and its grounds into a vibrant and sustaining environment; one that might attract the parents, involve the children and become a site for neighborhood activities and bring about a holistic change.

We learned that many of these hard working families had come to the U.S. from regions of the world where open market shopping was an everyday occurrence and necessity. What evolved was a plan to systematically turn a large portion of the school landscape into a series of sustainable gardens, with paths connecting each environment. The plan would involve planting an apple orchard, followed by a prairie recreation. Next a vegetable garden; followed by another prairie recreation; followed by a cane fruit garden; then another prairie; and finally a bird thicket garden with hazelnuts, nannyberries, high bush cranberries and native roses. A larger area adjacent to the school would then be developed as a community garden space.

The combination of a schoolyard/sustainable landscape and community garden site will hopefully garner support from the community members whose ties were closer to the land in their native countries.

At this writing, two prairie gardens have been installed, one of the bird shrub thicket gardens has been planted, a dwarf apple tree orchard has been planted and the community garden plots field is measured out. These plots will be tilled up in the fall in preparation for spring planting.

The goal is to have the gardens and the school become a neighborhood focal point for activities that might revolve around the natural and culinary delights growing around the school grounds. This will hopefully open the door for many other diverse district activities, such as various cultural music nights, street theater nights or high school band concerts.

And the community gardens will always be there and always need tending. Every waking hour, they will provide opportunities for the children and their heavily scheduled parents to take a few moments to work together to grow food and contribute volunteer hours to the school. This green and growing space will become a part of the community's lifestyle, thereby opening the door for parent, child, teacher and park district cohesion.

Far-reaching Benefits

The Oswegoland Park District's conservation department works with many other community groups and service organizations. These partnerships are always valuable, but are often based on the immediate needs of the service group with an immediate return to the agency. Alternately, the partnerships we formed with all the various schools are on-going, planned on the yearly calendar, with the students often realizing the fruits of their labor throughout the year, or, in many cases, for years to come. The district has also tapped into the schools of neighboring districts with much success, and, although their participation is less frequent, it is no less worthwhile. In fact, instructors have stated that their students have often cited our restoration work as their most rewarding activity of the school year.

What we all have learned is that no one entity should be an island. The flow of ideas and the acceptance of change is challenging on all parties. We are currently working on a program whereby our park district can 'borrow' a small group of horticulture students on short notice to go out in the field and do conservation work. It's basically one unit of local government working with another. If this program succeeds, it will be another way that community benefits from the collaborative services of its public agencies.

Dave Margolis is the natural areas manager at the Oswegoland Park District.

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