After moving back to her family home in Beverly, a gardener restores an oasis in the city to 1940s glory

Near the 107th Street Rock Island Metra train stop, a circa 1924 white stucco home stands on the 106th block of Walden Parkway. It’s clearly within Chicago’s city limits, yet the double lot it occupies is more akin to a farmer’s heaven on earth.

“I’m not really a city person,” said homeowner Meredith Horn, who moved to Beverly from Steger just before the pandemic. “My nature is not fit for the city. So, I’m trying to make my garden as much like a farmer’s open space as I can.”

From the looks of things, she’s been doing a good job.

Birds and butterflies flit among fruit trees and flowers, then dart off to rows of tall corn, raspberry and blueberry bushes, and vines loaded with green grapes. Plots surrounded by chicken wire fencing and poles made from tree branches are bursting at the seams with vegetables, herbs and native plants.

The bare trunk of an old pine tree outfitted with guide wires serves as a trellis for fast-growing bottle gourds.

Flowers appear everywhere, bobbing in the wind — purple phlox, daisies, pink and yellow cone flowers, black-eyed Susans, orange poppies, pink blazing star, Mexican sunflowers, beet-red bee balm and blue bachelor buttons.

Like the green fronds of the gladiola, what isn’t blooming or producing fruit stands patiently waiting for its time to shine.

“There is no rhyme or reason,” Horn said, “only that each row of vegetables have flowers at the end.”

Pathways of mowed grass meander through the plots and offer eye catching views at every turn. Even the rain barrels issued by the Chicago Metropolitan Water Reclamation District exude charm thanks to the oversized rain drops Horn painted on their sides.

This urban oasis made its public debut earlier in July during the Beverly Area Planning Association’s Garden Walk.

“I told the people at BAPA, ‘I don’t have a fancy home, but my garden is good,’” Horn said. “This is the first year I thought it was impressive enough for people to look at.”

Impressive it is, on the order of the gardens her grandparents, mother and aunt once maintained here, as documented in family photos taken in the 1940s. Just as now, the yard once harbored fruit trees and an abundance of raspberry bushes.

Horn’s Aunt Betty George, a librarian for Chicago Public Schools, lived in the house her entire life from 1926 until she died in 2012. Later, when the family rented out the house, the garden reverted to grass for easier maintenance.

Fortunately, decades ago, cuttings from the raspberry bushes had made their way to the yard of a friend of the family. Horn asked for cuttings from those plants and restored the raspberry plot. She also planted peach and plum trees, much like in the old family photos.

Prior to the pandemic, Horn, an environmental consultant, was considering whether to remain in Steger or move to the old family home.

Real estate agents urged her to let the house go for a song, but instead she decided to put on a new roof and move in. Soon after, she began formulating ideas to bring positive attention to the neighborhood.

“I wrote to BAPA, the Beverly Arts Center and the alderman and suggested Beverly should become an artist’s enclave,” she said. “They basically said, ‘Great idea — build it first.’ So, I decided I’m going to do that plan.”

Horn’s garden is the first step of her plan. She also wants to “native-flower-up” the area surrounding the 107th Street Metra stop, and for other artists to be able to display their works in nearby public spaces.

Serving as inspiration for this is “Quantum me,” a sculpture created by Davis McCarty near the 99th Street Metra stop sometimes referred to as the Beverly Bean.

For her home garden, Horn has created whimsical garden art in the form of concrete figurines covered with broken ceramic pieces, colorful glass slag and broken bathroom tiles. The works include a large cactus, two roosters, and a Madonna. She always chooses brightly colored materials. “No neutral colors,” she said.

She’s also artfully painted two cement donkeys, both with left ears missing, and several bottle gourds grown in her garden to serve as bird houses. With the help of friends, she also painted panoramas that include a light house and mountain scene on her garage door and north fence.

Because her work allows for a flexible schedule, she finds plenty of time to garden, producing an abundance of fruit vegetables she shares with neighbors and friends via a produce stand she places on her front lawn.

The four-wheeled cart was a labor of love created by the father of a friend, an engineer. “He insisted I call it Frank, short for Frankenstein,” Horn said. She applied colorful paints and installed a colorful awning.

Horn’s garden produces a remarkable quantity and variety of vegetables and herbs — red onions, garlic, greens, green beans, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, asparagus, Swiss chard, beats, zucchini, tomatoes, radishes, carrots, rhubarb, cucumbers, lettuce, basil, dill, chives and rosemary.

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“The only produce I buy from the store in summer is what can’t grow here,” Horn said.

Besides feeding her neighbors, Horn considers the needs of local wildlife.

“I grow dill, not so much because I like it, but because it serves as the host plant for the swallowtail butterfly,” she said.

She grows the cup plant which captures rainwater for birds around its stems and provides them with shelter and seeds.

Two varieties of milkweed nourish monarch butterflies. For bees and other pollinators, there’s Joe Pye weed, mountain mint, ironweed and tall American bellflower.

For an American toad she heard croaking its shrill call near the Metra stop one night, Horn even built a toad pond. No takers just yet, but she’s hoping the toad or toads will make a home in her backyard.

Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.