Garden Walk will inspire new green thumbs

Respect & Renew

Garden Walk will inspire new green thumbs

By Maria Taylor

Lisa Schon and her husband, Manfred, started out by tearing up their lawn for a renewable energy remodel, updating their 100-year-old Northville home from steam radiators to a geothermal system with underground pipes. Then they attended a library presentation by sustainable landscaping consultant Drew Lathin — and decided that as long as the yard was ripped out, they might as well take their sustainability goals one step further. The geothermal field turned into a rain garden, with three drainage tiers and lots of wetland plants to suck up runoff with their thirsty roots.

Sustainable gardening is part of the Schons’ outlook on life, which Lisa sums up as “Respect & Renew.” To date, the Schons have replaced about a third of the original turf grass with more sustainable plantings — native plants, flowers that grow without the need for chemicals and watering, species that thrive in flooded areas and in hot, dry Michigan summers.

And the result is stunning. Bright orange butterfly weed blooms in summer in the “hellstrip” between the sidewalk and the street, so vivid and intense that neighbors can’t help stopping to ask its name. They’re always fascinated by the buffalo grass, a fluffy prairie plant with a 7-foot taproot that grows deep into the soil — “Walk barefoot in it, because it just feels amazing,” Lisa tells them.

Purple coneflowers and blue wetland iris grow in the rain garden. There’s swamp milkweed for Monarch caterpillars. A vegetable garden grows side-by-side with a privet hedge and wisteria vines on trellises, part of the formal, classic landscaping that came with the house and remains in a bit of homage to gardens of years gone by. And it’s a working garden as well as a work of art.

“It’s not just the aesthetics of what’s going to be pretty there,” Lisa said. “It’s a water maintenance system. It’s what we need in our garden to support our bees and butterflies.”

The Schons’ garden is one of 11 that will

Manfred and Lisa Schon will show off their garden. be featured in the Northville Garden Walk, to be held July 14 by the Country Garden Club of Northville. The tour will highlight five private gardens and, as a bonus, a “Mini Garden Walk” featuring six patio gardens at a condo community — all easily accessible by foot. Attendees will come away inspired to create their own spaces of natural beauty, be they large spaces or small.

Kathryn Novak, publicity chair for the Country Garden Club of Northville, said interest in gardening is at an all-time high since the start of the pandemic — a dramatic reversal from years prior.

“Things are just flying out of the nursery,” she said. “I think it helped people get through the pandemic by giving them something to do. We think that this year, it’s really going to be big because the gardeners are out in full force. There’s so many new gardeners and so many people interested in it now, and we’re really excited about that.”

For her part, Lisa Schon hopes people on the garden walk will be inspired to incorporate native plants into their gardens at home.

“And that they can see there’s also a way to transition a garden from a very formal design to one using natives, or how they can coexist, like in our garden,” Schon said. “If you see it in action, I think it becomes more real to people and they realize it’s not so hard — and that you can start with just a little section.”

The Garden Walk will run 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on July 14. Tickets are $15 on the day of the walk (available at Northville Town Square and Gardenviews gift shop) or $12 in advance, beginning June 12, at cgcnv.org, Gardenviews, or by mail. The event will take place rain or shine. Face coverings and social distancing may be required.