New Home, New Landscape

Our family just moved to Wilmette, Illinois! It’s been a long time coming that my wife and I move into a home we picked together after she moved into my 2-bed condo in Bucktown several years ago. With our baby boy Quinn and dog Wes, we needed a little more space.

Growing up in neighboring Glenview, we weren’t sure which town to move to. While I have Glenview roots, the Thalmann Family roots run even deeper in Wilmette. My family settled in Wilmette over a century ago and my great grandfather built the business of Chalet that remains here today with my immediate family all working there. The full circle is starting to complete as my sister lives down the street!

One of the most exciting parts of moving to the suburbs was our yard. It has great bones due to Chalet landscape designing it about 7 years ago. However, Chalet has not been maintaining it since then, so it needed some cleaning up. I write this as I just talked with Nate Robinson at Chalet and others to plan out what our outdoor space will look like.\

Here’s a few projects that I have in mind to implement into our burgeoning nature-forward suburban lifestyle:

• Composting: we composted using Subpod in the city on our balcony. Now we can plant that into our mulch to divert food waste and fertilize our garden naturally

• Veggie Gardening: I’ve done veggie gardening at our farm in Wisconsin but having a garden at home has always been a dream. I’ve also had various hydroponic units like Rise Gardens and Lettuce Grow. I’ll probably end up with a hybrid where I start seeds early indoors and then grow outdoors during the season.

• Native Plants: I’m jumping on the native plant bandwagon personally and through my passionate colleagues at Chalet. The Village of Wilmette is promoting Native Plants and specifically Pollinator Habitats.  

• Bird Watching: I’m not a big bird guy currently but the interest is there. We plan to add a bird bath and bird feeder from Chalet. I feel like this could become a passion, but we’ll see.

• Other Sustainably Gardening Tactics: There’s a lot here, but since we’re in the fall, I’m experimenting with "leaving the leaves” instead of raking or blowing them as it provides nutrients when they break down.

I hope to continue writing about these as I put them into practice!