How a rooftop garden serves as a healing space for nature and humans alike

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Three stories above a busy stretch of North Halsted Street, Chicago, USA, on a rooftop with views of downtown skyscrapers, crickets chirping and prairie flowers dancing in the breeze.

Belted grasses set the tone in a vast 2,500 sq ft (232 sq m) native garden dotted with bright flowers: golden brown-eyed Susan, purple hoary verva, stiff yellow goldenrod, head of snowy white turtle, lime-stained balsam.

In all, 85 species native not only to Illinois, but to Cook County thrive in shallow, gravelly soil, so it dries to powder in the hand.

Butterflies – including monarchs and swallowtails – feed here, as do bees, wasps and lemon yellow finches.

This native garden on the Center on Halsted community center in Lakeview is many things to its architect, Robert Sullivan, a retired environmental scientist: an exciting challenge, a place of healing, a way to make his message.

At a time when studies show a major decline in insect pollinators — including the beloved monarch butterfly — Sullivan wants to show Chicagoans that they can help bring back these unsung heroes of the food chain.

“My crusade is to create good pollinator habitat for native pollinators in this city,” said Sullivan, who also gives out seeds and moderates the 6,100-member Northern Illinois Native Plant Gardeners Facebook page.

Interest in pollinator gardens is showing signs of growth, with the Wisconsin native plant nonprofit Wild Ones reporting an increase in national membership, from 4,300 people in January 2021 to 8,100 in January 2023.

Susan manages the herbs and vegetable garden.

Sullivan embraces bestselling author Doug Tallamy’s vision of a nationwide network of relatively small native gardens—in yards and balconies and, yes, even on rooftops—that create critical habitat for pollinators and other animals.

Sullivan, 64, of Western Springs, works on the rooftop garden with his wife, Susan, a retired elementary school teacher who grows hundreds of pounds of organic vegetables for seniors and a culinary training program.

Sullivan saw 110 species of insects in the garden, including fireflies, grasshoppers and seven types of dragonflies.

“It’s great,” said Joey McDonald, the Halsted Center’s events and volunteer manager. “It’s an oasis in the city.”

Natalia Jones, a meditation teacher who lives across the street from the Halsted Center, said she watched the Sullivans work in their garden during the Covid pandemic.

She ran into the Sullivans on the street, started volunteering at the rooftop garden, and even grew coneflowers and evening primroses on her sixth-floor balcony, where she saw monarch butterflies and goldfinches.

“Bob is incredible,” Jones said. “His passion for the topic really inspired me. It literally changed how I approach the neighborhood. I make a lot more time to see what’s around me and I get excited.”

During a recent stroll through his rooftop garden, home to native plants, Sullivan demonstrated how to crush the tiny teardrop-shaped capsules on the stem ends of beardtongue foxglove and obtain the seeds.

A pepper is seen in the grass and vegetable garden.A pepper is seen in the grass and vegetable garden.

The seeds aren’t that expensive, he said, but he likes to give them away as a way to encourage native gardens.

Sullivan and his wife, who gardens on a section of 500sq ft (46.4sq m) of the roof, were drawn to this site after the suicide of their daughter, Sloane, who was transgender. Sloane, a computer programmer, died in 2017 at the age of 22.

“She was an incredible programmer. She was really, honest to God, brilliant, and an artist, and she composed music. She designed this,” Sullivan said, pointing to the interlocking oval medallion on her custom t-shirt.

Sloane’s family, friends and employers donated to the Center on Halsted in his memory, and the Sullivans went to see where his signature was to be engraved in a memorial window. That’s when Sullivan looked up on the roof of the center and saw some plants.

“That’s what I want to do here,” Sullivan told his wife.

He volunteers for the center’s “green team”, and received permission to prune a tree from the roof.

“The next thing we know we’re in charge of all the green space here and it just changed my life in such an amazing way,” Sullivan said.

“It’s a very healing thing for us, and we feel close to Sloane here,” Susan said.

Today, a 2,000 sq ft (185.8 sq m) native plant section and an additional 500 sq ft (46.4 sq m) native plant area that Sullivan calls “the bakery” because of the blazing sun, hosts a remarkable group of survivors. : plants that tolerate city pollution, high winds and hip-high snowpacks, all while rooted in soil only 16 inches (40 cm) deep or less.

Some areas of the roof are only six inches (15 cm) of soil.

Of the 120 species of native plants that Sullivan tested there, 85 survived.

“These are the toughest of the tough.”

Purple coneflowers are a foot shorter than they would be in milder conditions. Butterfly weed does well, but only in the “ridge” section where for reasons not entirely clear to Sullivan – perhaps an old roof repair – the soil is about 16 inches (40cm) deep.

From a distance, the garden’s large field evokes a native prairie rich in nectar and pollen. Up close, you can see an understory of delicate succulents – small and narrow in a mosaic of mint green, olive, burgundy and pink.

The garden isn’t open to visitors because the roof can’t be completely fenced off due to historic preservation restrictions, but culinary students using Susan’s organic produce visit, and the Sullivans give weekend tours, which they advertise on at the garden’s Facebook page. Center on Halsted Garden Space.

The roof offers different colors and textures, depending on the month. In late May, lanceleaf coreopsis and foxglove beardtongue bloom at once.

Later this month, Sullivan expects purple, blue, pink and white asters and yellow goldenrod.

During a visit in late August, the last blooms of golden coreopsis complemented the purples of hoary vervain and rough burning star. The lush grass swayed in the breeze. A fat bumblebee feeding on a candy-colored flower.

Framed by a cloudless blue sky, Sullivan spread his arms and laughed aloud.

“If you like flowers, this is like heaven,” he said. -Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service

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