2100 W Norwood St

In 2022, West Ridge East Neighbors (WREN) Chicago Block Club Captain Roxane Assaf-Lynn began a four-corner project in support of urban pollinators to complement the turfgrass parkways in her enclave. Attempting to feature Illinois native species while still keeping a prim look, replete with white picket fences, success has been mixed. This little "plus-one" garden patch adjacent to one of the four featured corner 'wedge' gardens is an experiment in letting Mother Nature take her course, ie, more typical of parkway pollinator gardens. Purple Cone Flowers (echinacea), Bee Balm (monarda didyma) Chicory (cichorium intybus), and Illinois prairie grass are all native to this region of North America and can grow too tall for corner wedges. But this wild patch has been a splendor to witness taking its own course. Roxane dedicates this effort to her immediate neighbors, her chosen city of Chicago, the 40th Ward Environmental Board, the Edgewater Environmental Coalition (EEC) "Parkways for Pollinators" initiative, her father Roberto, whose parents came to the Americas from Palestine in the teens and 1920's, and her mother Evy, a New Orleans gardener who quietly appealed to her members of Congress on behalf of the environment.