The West Chicago Garden Club

By Ruth Kyme

Our April speaker will be Chicago-based gardener Jeremy Ohmes.  After acquiring a certificate in Horticultural Therapy from the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2018, Jeremy started Wild World Gardens to share his love of gardening with others and to help them transform their landscapes into beautiful and beneficial ecosystems filled with food, habitat, and connections to local wildlife. He has worked with patients at Schwab Rehabilitation Center and students at Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center to combine therapeutic horticulture with creating habitat for struggling species. And he is convinced that gardens can heal and support the whole community of life. 

Jeremy believes gardens can be meaningful spaces for healing and connection. For many years, he stretched out his green thumb with vegetables and herbs and then he discovered the need for more backyard biodiversity. He replaced his front lawn with a pollinator garden and got lots of strange looks from his neighbors. But he also received a lot of interest from friends and curious passersby. 

How do you feel when you dig in the dirt? What do you experience when you sit in a garden? There is little doubt that gardening has many therapeutic benefits and that caring for plants is wonderful for our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing. But what happens when we extend that healing to other species, too? This presentation will show how our gardens can be wild and restorative sanctuaries for humans and nonhumans alike. In Jeremy’s presentation, Co-Creating Gardens for Habitat, Health and Healing, we’ll discuss  and learn how you can create home gardens with native plants and how your landscape—no matter how big or small—can support your health and wellbeing as well as the local environment around you.

Meeting Location: St Andrew Lutheran Church (NE Corner of Prince Crossing & Geneva Road.)

Meeting Time:

• 6:45PM Arrive & Mingle
• 7:00PM Business Meeting
• 7:15PM Program

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