Doug Tallamy returns to the Glencoe Library to share details about his newest initiative, Homegrown National Park. The author of Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants and other acclaimed books on environment, Tallamy is calling on public and private spaces to offset the rapidly rising impacts of climate change by supporting and expanding biodiversity. Homegrown National Park challenges private property owners--who control 83% of U.S. land--to select ecologically effective plants, shrink the size of their lawns, and remove invasives to restore critical diversity. “In the past, we have asked one thing of our gardens: that they be pretty,” says Tallamy. “Now they have to support life, sequester carbon, feed pollinators, and manage water.”

Presented in partnership with the Friends of the Green Bay Trail and the Glencoe Sustainability Task Force.

REGISTER HERE for this Zoom program. A recording of the program will be available on the library's YouTube channel a few days after the event.

More about Homegrown National Park (written by Doug Tallamy): "Our parks, preserves, and remaining wildlands – no matter how grand in scale – are too small and separated from one another to sustain the native trees, plants, insects, and animals on which our ecosystems depend. We can fix this problem by practicing conservation outside of wildlands, where we live, work, shop, and farm. Thus, the concept for Homegrown National Park: a national challenge to create diverse ecosystems in our yards, communities, and surrounding lands by reducing lawn, planting natives, and removing invasive species. The initial goal of HNP is to create a national movement to restore 20 million acres with natives, an area representing ½ of what is now in lawn. We are at a critical point where we are losing so many native plant and animal species that our natural life support is in jeopardy. However, if many people make small changes, we can restore healthy ecological networks and weather the changes ahead."  

About the presenter: Doug Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored 106 research publications and has taught insect-related courses for 41 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants was published by Timber Press in 2007; The Living Landscape: Designing for Beauty and Biodiversity in the Home Garden, co-authored with Rick Darke, was published in 2014; Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation that Starts in Your Yard, a New York Times bestseller, was released in February 2020; and his latest book, The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees, was released in March 2021. His awards include recognition from The Garden Writer’s Association, Audubon, The National Wildlife Federation, Western Carolina University, The Garden Club of America, and The American Horticultural Association. Doug lives with his wife, Cindy, on their restored property in Oxford, Pennsylvania.

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Do you think you know enough about Emily Dickinson because you read “Hope is the thing with feathers” or “Because I could not stop for death” in high school English? Think again.  

Helen Vendler, author of Dickinson, Selected Poems and Commentaries, wrote that while this poet “baffles complete understanding… readers worldwide…have flocked to her poems, responding to her candor, her grief, and her wit.”   

This three-week summer course will probe the complexity of this 19th-century poet, who explores the questions that matter. Leading the discussion will be Barbara Joyce, who taught English at New Trier for 20 years. She has led previous summer Big Books discussions on Chekhov, Faulkner, Flaubert,  Wharton, and Woolf.  

Big Books is sponsored by the Friends of the Glencoe Public Library. Thank you, Friends!

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Bob Marley’s catchy reggae music inspired black pride the world over and Rolling Stone placed the artist at #11 in its list of the greatest artists of all time. Gary Wenstrup, adjunct professor at the College of DuPage, will use performance and interview clips to trace the arc of Marley’s career from “One Love” and “Jamming” to” “I Shot the Sheriff” and “Redemption Song.”

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