09/19/2026
Two phases. One tiny Logan Square front yard that is officially done wasting space on grass. 🌱
When these homeowners first reached out to us, they described what they wanted as a native / pollinator garden with seasonal color, privacy and lower maintenance.
But the phrase that really stuck with us?
“Relaxing and like a dreamy oasis.”
What we started with was very much not that. 😂
A roughly 13 x 17 foot front yard was mostly weedy grass, with a row of evergreen shrubs planted against the house. We researched those shrubs and discovered they were ultimately headed toward 8+ feet tall AND wide.
In this space? Absolutely not. 🙃
So Phase 1 began in July.
We removed the evergreens and started building a garden around the perimeter, taking inspiration from the homeowners’ Mediterranean garden Pinterest board but translating it for Chicago. Prairie dropseed, little bluestem, switchgrass, sedges, prairie smoke, Jacob’s ladder, coneflower, hydrangea, lavender and other plants were layered together based on the actual light, soil and scale of this particular space.
Then everyone lived with it for a little while.
And the remaining patch of grass started looking increasingly ridiculous. 😅
It wasn’t big enough to really play on. Nobody was using it. It still needed mowing and weeding. It wasn’t helping pollinators or managing water.
It was just… grass.
So Julia designed Phase 2 around a different question:
What if this tiny front yard could actually be USED?
The lawn became a permeable flex space with river rock pea gravel and flagstone steppers. The kids can explore it. Chairs can come out. A table can come out. It can be coffee in the morning, dinner outside, a place to play or somewhere to sit among the garden.
Nothing permanent dictates what it HAS to be.
Then we took that thinking beyond the fence.
The roughly 10 x 25 foot parkway was almost entirely turf, and when this new-ish house was built, the developer didn’t bother to create a walkway that actually lined up with the front gate. 🙄
So we did. 🌈
We removed the turf, lowered the parkway grade so rainwater can collect in the landscape instead of on the sidewalk, added a permeable path from gate to curb, and planted the rest. 🌾
And because we were already sourcing our river rock, flagstone, boulders, edging and leaf mulch through Chicagoland Materials, we partnered with their crew for the heavy site prep and turf removal.
We’ve removed this much sod manually before… 💪
We have nothing left to prove. 😂
With their help, we knocked out the entire second phase in about SIX HOURS. Parkway, flex space, hardscape, planting and even relocating a few Phase 1 plants that had spent the summer informing us that we’d misunderstood their relationship with the sun.
Looking at you, little bluestem 😘
Between the two phases, our Midwest Groundcovers orders alone account for SO MANY plants, plus a few astilbe and hydrangeas we found in Traverse City and simply did not possess the emotional fortitude to leave behind.
Is every SINGLE plant native? Nope, not quite.
Is the garden heavily rooted in Chicagoland natives selected for the actual conditions here? Absolutely.
Because ecological gardening doesn’t have to mean ignoring the homeowner’s taste. The fun part is figuring out how to make those things work together.
And when we finished yesterday, the homeowners couldn’t believe how different their home looked in a single day.
They were especially excited about one thing:
waiting for their kids to get home from school so they could see it. 🥹
That’s our favorite part, too.
Because we didn’t replace a lawn with landscaping.
We replaced space nobody was using with a garden this family gets to live in.
And just wait until those hundreds of plant babies grow up. 🌿🌸
