The Conservation Foundation
Conservation@Home program encourages homeowners to invite nature into their yards by utilizing native plants and practicing water conservation.
If you’ve been working on such a garden, you may already qualify for certification. Call The Conservation Foundation at 630-553- 0687, ext. 302 to learn more or visit:
www.preservethefox.org
Join these Batavia, Aurora, Oswego homeowners
Melissa Hyams grew up in New York City, surrounded by concrete. It wasn’t until she moved to England in 1993 that this professor of geography discovered her passion -- gardening. She has been a gardener for almost 20 years.
“I moved to Batavia nine years ago this summer and my husband and I bought a house and I started to create a garden,” she says. “I was interested in eliminating all the lawn that was here because I love flowering plants and shrubs and trees. I see no reason to have a lawn and that’s a big key to being a conservationist.”
Melissa says about five years ago, she attended a meeting where Jim Kleinwachter from Te Conservation Foundation was speaking on the Conservation@Home program.
“I thought, okay, well, I’ve got one of those gardens,” she says. “I told him and he made a date to come by and see and I got a little plaque.” She admits she doesn’t have an entirely native garden. She says the Foundation doesn’t expect certified gardens to be totally native, although she does have her fair share of native plants, as well as plenty of plants that originated from Japan. She also has two rain gardens in which she tries to trap as much of the rainwater runoff from her roofs as possible. She says she doesn’t use any inorganic anything, and she has a compost pile in the back yard.
“Mostly, my garden is so thickly planted that there is no ground to mulch, no place for weeds to grow. You have to love gardening to have a garden like mine,” she says. “Plants go through different stages and you have to cut them back and protect them, and not worry about who you might sell your house to in the future. I am extremely happy with my garden.”
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Conservation@ Home
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