The Chicagoland Guide-Rethinking Lawns with Dr. Becky Barak: How Native Plants Can Transform Chicagoland Landscapes

Aaron Masliansky (00:00)
Before we start today's show, I just want to give a brief introduction. If you're listening to this on the Inside the Skev feed, it's because we have now rebranded. It is all part of the Chicagoland Guide. The Chicagoland Guide has been a podcast I've been doing for the past several months. It's now April of 2025. And I just thought it would be best to bring it all together because really the Chicagoland Guide is what lives on the inside the Skev, just a little bit larger geographic area. So

You'll notice many of these episodes may focus on Skokie and Evanston where I live and work a lot, but they do have other places as well. So we have a little bit more of the region. It's a lot of fun. So stick with it, keep listening. I've got a ton of new episodes that are coming out. Today is going to be about native grasses all on the theme of Earth Day, because it's going to be released on Earth Day, April 22nd. And then I'll be releasing

re-releasing the episodes of the Chicagoland Guide afterwards. I've had some great guests. If you like ice cream, like Frio Gelato. If you want to learn about different restaurants in Rogers Park with Cambodian flair. That means a lot of great episodes I've already published that will now be living on this feed altogether. It'll make my life easier. It'll make your life easier. If you like listening to these podcasts, listening to these stories of these great people that live

in the Chicagoland area.

Aaron Masliansky (01:20)
Welcome to the Chicagoland Guide and I'm your host, Aaron Masliansky. Today we are in a plant sanctuary. We are talking to Becky Barak. Becky is a scientist who focuses on native plants and a lot of other things I'm going to ask her about so I don't get it wrong. She works at the Chicago Botanic Garden as a PhD from Northwestern, is an alum of Ida Crown Jewish Academy with me. We were classmates.

known each other for a very long time. And Becky's going to be doing an event at the Skokie Public Library on April 24th that we're going to get to. But Becky, thank you so much for joining me today.

Becky Barak (01:55)
Thank you for having me.

Aaron Masliansky (01:56)
Yeah, it's great to be here. Becky, tell us the audience a little bit about your background and how you can speak to what we're talking about today.

Becky Barak (02:05)
Yeah, so, well, thank you for the introduction. There was a lot of really great stuff. I am a conservation scientist. I work at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and I also work in our joint program with Northwestern. We have a graduate program in plant biology and conservation. Yeah, I have a master's and a PhD in plant biology and conservation from that same program. And I've been studying ecology.

For a long time, I've really been interested in animals and plants since before I even knew Aaron. then since before, since our time at Ida Crown when I took AP Biology and Ruth Gleisher was my teacher, we'll give her a shout out. since I first learned ecology was a thing that you could actually study about the natural world and about plants and animals, I've been hooked on it ever since. So yeah, so I have a background in plants.

as well as some other ecology stuff and I work on plants every day.

Aaron Masliansky (02:55)
What do you think got you into liking plants so much besides being in bio class?

Becky Barak (03:00)
Well, I do remember this was in bio class. But I remember learning about photosynthesis. Actually, Aaron, you mentioned photosynthesis before we turned on the recording. But when I learned about photosynthesis and the fact that there are these long columns of water droplets that are moving through the plant all the time, even though you can't see them.

Aaron Masliansky (03:08)
You

Becky Barak (03:22)
and they evaporate off the leaf and that causes all of the water to basically be pulled up from the roots through the leaf. I remember learning about that and then like looking around at the trees just on my way home and realizing that I knew something about these plants that I didn't know before. And so that was really exciting to me. But I took a little detour when I was an undergrad, I worked in a bird physiology lab and I researched bird beta-beasel metabolic rates.

And I was not into that. I didn't like it. A couple of the birds died. Like it was really not my thing. Yeah, I just wasn't into it. And I actually became a high school teacher. I taught high school science at Niles West High School for a few years. But I went back to, took a night class in restoration ecology and I learned about how people can use restoration to try and repair ecosystems that have been damaged. And that got me right back into the world of

Aaron Masliansky (03:52)
God.

Becky Barak (04:11)
plants. And so learning about how you try to repair ecosystems, try to plant things, try to design seed mixes that are going to like bring habitats back that have been damaged or destroyed was kind of the thing that got me back into plants after my little bird detour. So

Aaron Masliansky (04:29)
And you, I mean, you're at like, I would say like the crown jewel of plant science and whatnot in the Chicagoland area. You're at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I absolutely love that place. I've been going there since I was a kid. I would go there with my grandparents and then like, and then I've been a member for years and years now, and I love going there. And people look at it like, this is like a natural garden, but really it is really shaped. It is manmade.

but it has many different types of ecology. And for those who haven't been there, mean, tell us a little bit about the garden, what the public sees and like what you're doing behind the scenes.

Becky Barak (05:02)
Yeah, OK, great question. Thanks for being a member. Yes, the Botanic Garden is a really special place. And I would say we do have highly manicured areas. And then we also have more sort of wild or natural areas that are a little bit more off the beaten path. So I think that there are 27 different gardens at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Hopefully, I won't get in trouble if I get that number wrong. But it's somewhere around there.

Aaron Masliansky (05:06)
Of course.

Becky Barak (05:27)
And they range from rose gardens to the English walled garden to we also have a native plant garden. We have the fruit and vegetable area, which is a big favorite for lots of people. It shows how you can grow a huge diversity of fruit and vegetable plants, in a really cool design. But then we also have the woods and the prairie and we have a few kind of natural spaces, more natural spaces.

at the garden too that people can visit. So there's a huge woodland called Mary Mcs MacDonald Woods. And part of it is open to the public, part of it isn't because it's under a lot of active restoration, but it's a really great place to see high quality woodland from our area. And it's right by the parking lot. So you may not have seen it, but there is a woods there at the Botanic Garden also and a big prairie further at the south end by Dundee.

Aaron Masliansky (06:16)
And I think it's really, it's like you could go and you can drive in and that's nice, easy. But one of the nicest things I love to do is to ride my bike there. You know, and I live in Skokie and I ride my bike up the path along Green Bay and you take it over to Lake Cook and like you just, you come in through those woods and then there's a really beautiful area where you can park your bikes. Now that was built a couple of years ago and it's just like, just so stunning. And it doesn't matter what year or what part of the year you go there.

Because the seasons just really change it. It's like you're you're walking in a piece of art. I would think

Becky Barak (06:47)
Wow, that's great. I'm glad you love it. But yeah, you did ask, I remembered, about what does the public not necessarily know about the garden. So I would say the woods and the prairie for one thing. But then the other thing is that we do science at the garden. So you have probably passed on your bike the Plant Conservation Science Center, which is along the service road if you cross this big wooden curved bridge.

Aaron Masliansky (06:50)
It's really my favorite. Yeah.

Becky Barak (07:12)
you'll end up at the Science Center. And we actually have a lot of labs in there. We have a lot of offices, meeting spaces. There's a green roof on top. There are greenhouses where all of the plants for the garden are grown in those greenhouses, but we also are able to work with greenhouse staff to do research projects in the greenhouse. So I think that a lot of that is behind the scenes. Not all. There are definitely events where people can come and learn about the science that's happening at the garden.

But I would say a lot of people who come to the garden don't necessarily know that we have a whole research department right there doing research that I would say is high quality, cutting edge work in plant science.

Aaron Masliansky (07:50)
And that's where you work,

Becky Barak (07:51)
Yeah.

Aaron Masliansky (07:51)
And that's not where like, you if you go to the orchid show and I want to get to the native plants, but like if you go to the orchid show and everything, are you guys developing like does basically bioengineering those orchids or other plants that then go into these shows because they are so perfect and beautiful or are those brought in from other places around the world?

Becky Barak (07:56)
Yeah.

Some of the orchids are grown on site, there are some native species in the orchid show. There are actually native species of orchid in Illinois, which people don't know, but there are. But a lot of those plants are brought in. And there are departments in the garden that are working on plant breeding and sort of designing new varieties of plants. I don't do that.

new varieties of plants that then can go out into the market and people are able to buy them for their gardens.

Aaron Masliansky (08:35)
They're gorgeous. It's really amazing just what goes on. mean, the conceptual design is fantastic. But what you're doing, I mean, you're looking at like the native plants. We're talking about grass and you're doing this event coming up on April 24th at 6.30 PM at the Skokie Public Library. It's called Rethinking Lawns, Incorporating Native Plants into Home Landscapes.

And I know that like the standard of what you see around the Chicagoland area, and I'm sure in many places around the world, is just normal green grass. Right. And that has just been the standard. feel like it's kind of like the American 1950s suburban modality of how you design the landscape and you have some trees and some flowers. But really, it's this this Kentucky grass or, you know, you could speak to

Becky Barak (09:19)
Yeah.

Aaron Masliansky (09:20)
Yes. So you know more than I do, obviously.

And it's hard to think about, okay, different types of other species. And you can look at it and say, well, what was here before? Because I see different restoration projects going on, say like in Northbrook on Dundee Road. There was a forest that was near the post office over there that was basically cut down and now it's more prairie. And I see them doing controlled burns and things like that. And I see more things going on.

Why is that type of landscape better native prairie grass than let's say a forest that was there or regular sod that you typically see?

Becky Barak (09:57)
Okay, so before European settlement, Illinois was over 60 % prairie. And now people argue about whether there's like 0.1 % left or 0.01 % left of what was the original prairie.

So the vast majority of the prairie was destroyed for agriculture, but now where we live in Northern Illinois, it's really a lot of development. And what we have of natural areas is really small preserves.

So part of the idea of restoring is bringing back some of that habitat that was once here. There was also woodland here. So I think in a lot of cases we have woodland, we keep it as woodland. In some areas there are lands that are coming out of agriculture that can be reconverted back into prairie. The other thing is a prairie is a grassland that has minimal trees, but it has

A lot of native grasses, native wildflowers can have hundreds of species, actually. So we don't necessarily think of places like Northern Illinois being as diverse as like our rainforest, but they're kind of our own rainforest because we can really have hundreds of species of plants living in an area. And that's not to mention all of the other wildlife that can be there.

So part of the idea is bringing back habitat that was once here. But another part is thinking about the function of like, what does this habitat do? And so when we think about native plants, we think about them having really deep roots. And I talk to people about this and they're like, okay, that sounds cool. But it's like, imagine you see like a native grass, a like big blue stem, which is our state grass of Illinois. It can grow about six feet above ground.

But some of these native plants can have 20 feet of roots underground. Yeah, I know you don't think about it, but they're really, really very deep roots. When we say deep roots, that's really, they're really deep roots. And so those deep roots can like absorb a lot of water. We think that they can store carbon. They can help with stormwater, which is a huge issue in our area, but they can also survive without tons of input of water like we need when we have a green grass lawn.

Aaron Masliansky (11:40)
my god.

Becky Barak (12:04)
Kentucky bluegrass, as anybody knows, who has put down sod ever, the roots are really, really short and they kind of stay that way. And so because the roots of our typical turf grass are so short, people have to constantly be watering it. So it doesn't do well in drought. We all know that grass turns really brown if you don't water it enough, but it also doesn't absorb a lot of stormwater, which people can know because sometimes you have a lawn, it's fully lawn and it's flooded.

So it's a lot because of those really shallow roots that we have in our typical turf grass lawns. And so one of the things we think about with native plants is being able to grow deeper roots, being able to absorb more water in storms, and needing less water to survive. So you don't need to be out there watering every single day. And aside from that, people think about things like pollinator support. People think about things like urban heat.

and kind of all of these other things that we think native plants can provide a benefit for overgrass. And I will also say in our project, I'm part of this big collaborative project called Rethinking Lawns. I'm working with people from Chicago Park District, Chicago Botanic Garden. I have a collaborator, we have a collaborator at University of Michigan Flint. And so we're all working on these questions and we think a lot about lawn that isn't being used for anything. So we don't think that like you should,

take down a soccer field and put down a prairie instead. This is more kind of lawn that is in the edges, that's mowed as lawn because people don't know what else to do with it, that can potentially be converted into something else.

Aaron Masliansky (13:31)
And in terms of like maintenance for this, so I'll give you an example. I live in the townhome association and we're looking at adding more native grasses to it. have a couple, we have two detention basins on either side of the complex and you know, we have it's Kentucky bluegrass and then we have trees and we have different types of bushes and things like that. And we want to introduce more elements of native grasses and to say the detention areas because

A lot of water goes there or we've had trouble growing the grass sometimes because it's so shaded or just many different factors. So talking about it with our landscaping company, sometimes there's a pushback, right? Because they're not used to doing it like that or they can say that there could be more maintenance with it. So what do you say to that and how do you maintain these types of grasses and not let go?

get out of control.

Becky Barak (14:22)
Yeah, so that's a good question. One other thing I will mention is sedges, which are, they look like grass, but they're not actually grass. And they're another kind of category of native plants. And I think there are 500 species of sedges that are native to North America. I think there's 200 species that are native in Illinois. And they, some of them just naturally grow really short.

like six to eight inches is their complete final growth. so a lot of these species, so I agree. I think there is an issue with maintenance and I think there is an issue with education in terms of a lot of landscaping companies just aren't as familiar with what native plants are around and available and what native plants may work best in certain habitats. I think there are kind of,

companies or people that are working on those ideas and that are kind of trying to get those ideas out there. But I would say that there are actually native species that just naturally have a short growth. And they naturally would end up a lot shorter than like a Kentucky bluegrass. you stopped mowing it, it would get a few feet high. There are native grasses and native sedges that are shorter than that. Yeah, I mean, if you've ever seen like a totally un-mowed lawn, it's like, I don't know, maybe.

Aaron Masliansky (15:32)
wow.

Becky Barak (15:38)
two feet, a foot and a half, it's like scraggly. So there are native plants that are shorter than that. But I think for maintenance that is a thing because one thing is getting things established. It's really easy. We really know very well how to make a lawn. That's a conductive progress lawn. You can put down sod, you can put down seed, you can water it for a few weeks and you basically have a lawn. And with native plants, seeds can take a lot longer than that to establish.

Aaron Masliansky (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Barak (16:04)
So depending on the size of the project, people might want to use plugs, which are just like buying the actual plants and then planting those. And that has a much shorter time to establishment, but it still takes time for these plants to like grow big and take up more space. So I think it's that there's time for sure. And there's like a few weeks of watering really honestly, and then these plants can take off and can just use rainwater that comes in.

Aaron Masliansky (16:29)
so you don't have to water

them regularly.

Becky Barak (16:30)
No, so it's like for a lot of the native plants, it's like you just water them until they're established. So it's really like around three weeks and then they should be able to exist with just kind of natural water. You can, if we're having a dry summer or something, they can still be watered once a week or something like that to keep them, keep them alive. But really they should, they're native to this area, they're used to the conditions that we have here and they should be able to persist even with our.

Aaron Masliansky (16:54)
Do they need to be

cut or anything like that or pruned?

Becky Barak (16:56)
So some people do that, like cut them back at the end of the summer. Weeding is a thing because you kind of have to know what you planted and what you didn't plant if you want to be weeding out other things that showed up there. So, you know, one recommendation is to kind of just be aware of what you put out and where and then kind of things that are not what you planted, you may want to like be on top of that because whenever we

We also do not recommend tilling because when you till soil, you bring up a bunch of weed seeds from the soil and then they're like, yay, and they get a chance to grow. And so then you get a lot of weeds. But kind of being on top of weeds in the early stages can be important.

Aaron Masliansky (17:29)
Heh.

So it could be helpful if you only do a few different species so that way it's easier for you to know what is what.

Becky Barak (17:41)
Yeah, definitely at the beginning.

Aaron Masliansky (17:43)
Yeah. And then, it sometimes, are these plants considered rain gardens?

Becky Barak (17:47)
So rain gardens would be plants that are more kind of used to living in a really moist soil. So among native plants, when we think about them, there can be plants that exist in a whole spectrum from really wet ground or wetlands, like submerged water, all the way to like really dry, like on the tops of hills. And so for a rain garden, you would preferentially select species that are used to being kind of inundated with water and that can survive in that type of area.

Aaron Masliansky (18:16)
And then, you know, one of the things that, you know, we've, we've dealt with around the Chicago and area is, is rodents. And, you know, one thing that people worry about when you see an unkempt lawn, or if you see something that's a little bit more native, it's like, my God, like what do they have living in there? So what's, what do you say to that? How do you prevent that from happening?

Becky Barak (18:24)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I knew I felt like we were going to talk about this. Yes, there's definitely some rodents around our area. I will say that the biggest sign, and I have a lot of native plants in my yard, kind of in various places in my yard and various types of native plants. And the one issue that we had with rodents, I don't even know what type of rodent it was, but we found like a cache of

fruit, if we had this fruit tree that was just dropping apples all the time and nobody was eating them. And that was really what was perpetuating the rodents in my yard until we got rid of that tree. It wasn't the native plants. But I do think that people, you know, I think that there are options. So I think when we talk about these native plants or these kind of lawn alternatives, we're thinking about a range of options. And the range of options can be whatever people are comfortable.

And there are some species of grass that you can just substitute in for your Kentucky bluegrass that are going to have improvements over Kentucky bluegrass that you can still mow and you can still keep them short and make sure that you can see all of the parts of your yard and not worry about it, all the way to growing some of the taller prairie plants. So I think if people prefer like a very short-kempt look because they wanna be aware of whether there are rodents in their area,

I think that's something that people can do. I also think when we first plant some of these native habitats, we keep the grass. So this is what we've done in our research. We kill the grass and then plant the plugs into the grass. So the grass that's dead is still holding the ground down until the other plants have to establish. And you can also mulch in between those areas. you're making sure that there is something covering the ground and you're not just having large areas of open soil.

Aaron Masliansky (20:06)
Mm.

Becky Barak (20:16)
at any point in this process, which I think would be better, like covering the bare soil is beneficial for preventing the rodents and also for preventing weeds.

Aaron Masliansky (20:26)
One of the things I've seen people do around the area is where they take basically like black garbage bags and cut them and put them down and cover up the grass when they're trying to do something. I imagine that's killing the Kentucky bluegrass because it's not getting light. And then probably they reintroduce new species after that. Is that what you're talking about? It's not like putting a chemical down or is it?

Becky Barak (20:45)
No, so we

did, you can do it either way or you can do it multiple different ways. What we've done in our research at the Botanic Garden and in the Chicago Park District is we've killed it, the lawn with herbicides and then the lawn is there but it's dead and we've like plugs of native species within that. People also do the black garbage bag thing which is solarization. So yeah, the idea is to kill the plants that are underneath it and then you can plant

new plants there. One of the things that people talk about is that if you're killing the grass with the black garbage or with solarization, you may also be killing any like some beneficial microbes that are in the soil because you're like burning like steaming them out or like making it really really hot in there and then they can survive. So I think there's like pluses and minuses to these different ways of killing the lawn but yeah that's one way people

Aaron Masliansky (21:27)
yeah.

Okay. And what, what type of plants do you recommend that people start with? So like for a regular lawn or like this detention base and I'm talking about like, what's a, are some good ones people should look for?

Becky Barak (21:45)
So I think it depends if people are interested in grasses or kind of more wild flowers. But for grasses or like a grass-like look, I think sedges are really nice. I think you can get some sedges at different nurseries. And there are a lot of native sedges that come in all different shapes and sizes, but really green. Green is their color. But they're going to be taller, shorter, wide leaves or narrow leaves.

Aaron Masliansky (22:06)
Ha

Becky Barak (22:09)
And then there are some really cool native grasses that are on the shorter side. So one of the ones we like is called purple lovegrass. In the fall, it has this like big purple plume. If you like that, you can keep it. If you don't like that, you can mow it and then it will look more like a regular grass. There's prairie drop seed and little bluestem, which are native grasses that are a little bit taller, but that are really beautiful and are relatively like readily available on the market.

And then in terms of wildflowers, we actually have a lot of short wildflowers that bloom in the spring. So prairie smoke is a really beautiful one that has a really lovely pink flower, the leaves are really nice and the leaves kind of stay the whole year. Some of the native wild onions are really pretty. They bloom in the fall. Their foliage looks a lot like grass, so you can kind of keep it around. It looks a little bit like grass. So I think there are a lot of options and

and a lot of resources that people can look and kind of see what they like. At our website for our research project, rethinkinglons.com, we have all of the species that we've used in our research and pictures of them that people can look at. And then the one that I mentioned, this is not a native plant, but there is also some movement to replace typical turf grasses with what's called fine fescues. And

They're non-native grasses, but they grow a lot slower than Kentucky bluegrass, and they also have deeper roots. We've even seen this in the greenhouse. They grow really, really deep roots in just a few months' time. And so they really give a similar look to lawn, but they can be mowed much less frequently and watered much less frequently once they are established. So for me now, when I have patches in my lawn, because I do have some of my yard is lawn.

When I have patches in my lawn, just replace it with fine fescues as opposed to Kentucky bluegrass. And so like I figure over time, I'll convert it into this other type of lawn.

Aaron Masliansky (23:55)
Does it start to take over? Cause I mean, I've seen things where, like if you're near a golf course, you start to get patches of different types of grass that you might see like on the greens in your lawn.

Becky Barak (24:02)
Ha!

Yeah, I don't know. I think so far it kind of stays where it is and I can see the differences in the different types of grass in my yard. But I think over time if I kind of like reseed it a little bit every year, I'll end up with more of the fine fescues than I do of the Kentucky bluegrass, whatever's currently there. But I also like, I don't really herbicide my lawn or anything. So I have a lot of violets and a lot of plantains or various weeds.

weeds in my lawn, although the violets that are lawn weeds are actually native plants. And I'm, I think they look pretty. Some people don't like them, but I think they look pretty when they're kind of like lavender and purple in my lawn. I'm fine with that. But yeah, yeah. So I don't do a lot of lawn maintenance, but I do repair patches with, with the fine fescues.

Aaron Masliansky (24:47)
I think it's important that we look at these things, you know, because it's, I recently heard from one of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District commissioners, Cameron Davis, came to speak at, I'm part of the Rotary Club of Evanston, and he spoke about what they're doing and the massive engineering projects that this organization does to keep stormwater out of our basements and keep the sewage flowing and keep the waterways clean.

is just unbelievable. mean, I am in awe of this organization. And one of the things we were talking about was the deep tunnel project, it's called TARP. And basically it's these massive tunnels that go throughout the Chicagoland area and go into these huge reservoirs that can hold billions of gallons of water. So when you have these big storm events, they go in there. And I asked him, that project was started in the 1970s. What are the...

ideas for the future. And he basically said, there isn't another big engineering project that we should be doing. We should be thinking about how do we add more types of pervious surfaces and things that can absorb the water rather than it go into our stormwater system, because then it becomes overloaded. So it's important that we have different types of grasses that can hold a lot more water.

and we can add more of these types of services. So it benefits everybody and it keeps our waterways clean. So, you know, I know you're doing this, you're getting this out to Skokie, it's through the Botanic Garden. mean, how can we get more municipalities and everything to think about these types of wands, to make this stuff happen, to think about parking lot construction and design, to be able to maintain this water without having it necessarily.

build huge holding tanks that go underneath everything, which are expensive to maintain and to build, but to do these plantings, which are better for the environment. They reduce the amount of chemicals that we have going into our waterway system. They're better for, you know, biodiversity, all these types of things.

Becky Barak (26:40)
Yeah, that's a great point. And I will say, I actually don't know the numbers for Chicago or Skokie, but that in big cities, 30 to 60 % of water, of potable water that people can drink goes towards keeping their lawns green. So not only is it like natural stormwater that's coming, it's also a ton of water that people are deliberately putting on lawns to keep them alive, just because they require so much.

Aaron Masliansky (26:54)
Whoa.

Becky Barak (27:04)
So yeah, I think there's a tremendous opportunity to just to help absorb stormwater, to put less water onto those landscapes through making some of these changes with plants. And I think what you said about municipalities is really important because I think when we read about people converting their lawns,

it tends to be sort of single homes, single families that are doing this. You read about it. I feel like every once in a while in the New York Times, there'll be a story of someone who converted their lawn. They have an urban oasis now and they see a lot of birds and they see a lot of butterflies and that's really great. But it's also a question of scale, right? So like, you know, like a lot in Chicago, I think is like 0.1 acres. You know, if you think about the Chicago Park District,

which is our partner in this project, they manage 8,000 acres of parkland in Chicago. And that's just a much bigger area to be thinking about and to be kind of trying to implement some of these things. Which is not to say their residential level is bad. I think the residential level is really good and I think people can definitely kind of convince one another and ideas can spread through that. But it's like we're thinking about scale of like one house versus municipalities that might be managing hundreds or thousands of acres of land.

And so I think the first thing is to really think about, well, so I will say we do a lot of communication about this project. We have our website, but in the Chicago parks where we're doing research and at the Chicago Botanic Garden, we have a lot of signage about our project. have QR codes where people can supply their thoughts about what species they're interested in and where they could kind of see this happening. So we do try and do a lot of that communication outreach work.

But I think a thing to think about is what areas are lawn that just do not have to be lawn. Like they're just mowed because the people with the mowers are there. Those areas, like nobody's sitting there. Nobody's playing sports there. Nobody's having a picnic. Nobody's having barbecue. Like they're just lawn for no reason. And that's like the low hanging fruit, right? Of where we can make changes because this is just area that's lawn for no reason. And so I think that if...

every municipality started thinking about some of those spaces and converting those spaces, that would only be a net win really, because nobody would be losing out on recreational spaces that they wanna have continue to be long. And we would be able to start getting these ideas out and these things out that people would kind of see and that may change their minds. So I think it's really like, I think that's one of the main things is kind of finding those spaces that are just as my collaborator, Lauren Umek would say, they're just,

looking at grass and they're not doing stuff on it grass so find the looking at it grass and that's like kind of a good win-win-win for where to implement some of this these ideas.

Aaron Masliansky (29:50)
Absolutely. And, you know, are there any types of programs like where you can get like free plants or anything like that? Or can you buy these plants at say your local nursery or like a Home Depot or places like that? Or do you have the special order?

Becky Barak (30:04)
So that's a good question. I think some things are available at local nurseries and some things have to be special ordered. I was just working on this for the talk because I do think that a lot of times we talk about this stuff and then we don't give people the resources of where they can actually find these plants. so Emily Oaks has a native plant sale every year. They're having an Earth Day event next weekend and I think they're gonna have a native plant sale there.

So there are lists of kind of native plant sales that you can find through

Aaron Masliansky (30:29)
And that's in Skokie for those listening. That's okay.

Becky Barak (30:38)
through the internet. not going to tell you a website because I'm going to get it wrong, but if you just look up like plant sales in Illinois, you can find native plant sales. There's a lot of schools do them, lot of kind of conservation groups do them. So that's a great place. I think there's also sellers at the farmers markets in the area who sometimes come and sell native plants.

Aaron Masliansky (30:57)
That's the Botanic Garden.

I know you have a plant sale.

Becky Barak (30:59)
I don't think we sell a lot of native plants. I know Morton Arboretum has a big plant sale coming up. I also don't know if they're selling native plants at that. I know. But for nurseries, it's kind of good idea to go in with an idea of what you want and then try to talk to people to see if they have native plants, if they have native grasses or sedges, if that's what you're interested in.

Aaron Masliansky (31:09)
Well, I smell an opportunity.

Becky Barak (31:23)
And then there are also kind of online native plant nurseries where you could order plants and you can also order seeds. So I think there are resources out there. It's just kind of a matter of finding them and it's not always going to be as easy as it is to find, you know, some of the summer annuals and things like that.

Aaron Masliansky (31:40)
Sure. No, that makes sense, but hopefully it'll become more so as it becomes more of what we see typically. And then at the event that you're doing at the library on the 24th, tell us a little bit about that. Is that just, is it going to be like a moderated panel? What's the program?

Becky Barak (31:55)
So I'm going to talk about some of the work that we're doing to study lawn alternatives. And then I'm going to talk about the range of possibilities for lawn alternatives. And hopefully, I hope to be able to provide a lot of resources for people who are interested in this idea, how to kind of get started if you're just thinking about it, kind of how to think about different stages that you might implement this, and then

like we just talked about where to get plants if you're interested in this idea and kind of where to get information. There actually is a lot of information. For the Skokie people, there is a native plant site on the Village of Skokie website that talks about where to get, it talks about garden planning and all sorts of really good stuff on there. And then hopefully there will be lots of time for questions if people have questions or conversations that they wanna be having about native plants.

Aaron Masliansky (32:45)
I think it's awesome. I'm going to have the link to it on the website here. you know, if you listened to this before, uh, August, I'm sorry, April 24th, 2025, you'll be able to go to the event. If not, I hope that this is really helpful information for everybody. I'll put a lot of links in the show notes. Um, but you know, I think if you're in Skokie, Skokie really cares about, um, like lawn beautification and they have awards for people that do different things. And I think,

A lot of times you see it with the native plants and they look absolutely stunning. And it's just, it's just good for everybody. It's you walk by, you feel good and it's good for the environment. It's good for the animals, everything else. Like I absolutely love it. So I think it's, this is a great event to be having. You know, I'm so glad that you're doing it, Becky.

Becky Barak (33:30)
Well, thank you and thanks for giving me a chance to kind of come and talk about plants. I always love the opportunity. So thank you for having me, Aaron

Aaron Masliansky (33:37)
It's a pleasure and thank you everybody for listening and look forward to seeing everybody at the event at the library on April 24th.

Becky Barak (33:44)
Thank you.