Green Guerrilla

🌱Join Green Guerrilla for an outdoor pop up native plant sale at Elgin Math and Science Academy! ✨ Pick up locally adapted plants ready to thrive in your garden.

🗓️ Saturday, October 10th: 1 PM to 6 PM ☀️ Sunday, October 11th: 8 AM to 12 PM

Tag a neighbor ready to rethink their lawn! 🐝🌻

Join us this Sunday, October 4th, from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Elgin Math and Science Academy for an incredible afternoon featuring Emmy Award-winning cellist and artist Ben Sollee!

Come hungry—there will be delicious eats available from the Dulce Tentaciones Mexicanas food truck, plus great grazing options from Suburban Graze.

While you're enjoying the music and food, make sure to stop by the Green Guerrilla table! We’ll be giving away one free native plant to everyone who visits our table (while supplies last)! 🌿

📍 Where: Elgin Math and Science Academy

📅 When: Sunday, October 4 | 3:00 PM – 6:00 PM

We can’t wait to see you there! 💚

Experiencing any ponding or flooding from the rains this weekend? The City of Elgin offers Private Property Drainage Assistance Program🌧️➡️🌸

​When water from an improperly installed drain tile was overflowing onto the sidewalk and street, this Elgin homeowner faced a city code violation. Instead of just burying another pipe, we resolved the issue through the City of Elgin’s Private Property Drainage Assistance Program by installing an intentional, deep-rooted native rain garden.

​Project Highlights

​Drainage Mitigation & Code Compliance: We excavated the problematic drain tile section and constructed a rain garden basin to naturally absorb, filter, and hold stormwater runoff on-site before it reaches the street.

​Conservation@Home Certified: Packed with hardy native species that absorb deep runoff and provide pollinator habitat, earning official Conservation@Home certification.

​Interactive Neighborhood Education: Added plant ID stakes equipped with scannable QR codes so passing neighbors and kids can scan and learn about the native species powering the garden.

​Personalized Touches: Accented with a custom wooden lighthouse feature and decorative rocks for the homeowner’s grandchildren to paint and decorate.

​💡 For Elgin Residents: The City of Elgin’s Private Property Drainage Assistance Program provides cost-share funding (covering up to 75% of project costs for rain gardens) to help homeowners correct drainage issues, standing water, and code violations.

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Elgin has been the heartbeat of Green Guerrilla for eight years. From quiet neighborhood backyards to public parks and historic school grounds, we've worked to prove that responsible land management and local community action go hand in hand. 🌿

Nominations are now live for the annual Elgin Image Awards (due September 25th), and we’d be honored to have your support!
www.elgindevelopment.com/elgin-image-awards/

If you’ve seen the impact of our work across town, consider submitting a nomination in any of these categories:

🌱 Volunteer Extraordinaire: Two terms on the Elgin Sustainability Commission (Urban Ecology Chair), EMSA Environmental Committee, Friends of the Fox River 4th-grade environmental education, and community stewardship at The NENA Butterfly Garden.

🌳 Gamechanger Projects:
• Bringing 20 oak trees to EMSA with the Morton Arboretum & CRTI for a 450-community member planting day.🌱
• 15 native demonstration gardens on the Eastside + free native plant giveaways at the Elgin Farmers Market.
• The Native American medicinal plant garden living exhibit at the Elgin Public Museum🦋.
• Securing the Midwest Grows Green🌾 grant at Lords Park🦬, helping double Elgin’s herbicide-free park spaces to 26+ acres.

🚜 Creating a Difference: Recognizing Green Guerrilla's 8 years providing noise, emission, and herbicide reduction services in land care to Elgin schools, conservation sites, and neighborhoods.

🌎 Green Initiative / Sustainable Business: Celebrating 8 years of eco-friendly groundskeeping (we won back in 2019, but the work never stopped!).

🤝 Excellence in DEI & Building Equity: Seven years as EMSA's contracted groundskeeper and environmental committee member, helping restore the historic campus to help secure its diverse K–8 charter.

⭐ Professional Rockstar: A category for anyone who wants to champion the full spectrum of local business leadership and grassroots public works.

Please take 2 minutes to submit a quick nomination through the Elgin Image Awards Submission Form before September 25th.

Thank you for supporting sustainable local business and investing in Elgin's future!

-Christopher Flaherty

Elgin Image Awards a prestigious recognition program designed to honor individuals, projects, and organizations that have made remarkable contributions in Elgin

Everyone knows skunk cabbage for melting snow in February or filling the woods with massive tropical-looking leaves by May. But hardly anyone stops to look at how it ends. 🌱➡️💀

​By late summer, those huge cabbage leaves completely liquefy, leaving behind this: a decomposing compound fruit that looks like an alien relic.

​Inside that decaying, blackened mass are dozens of pea-sized seeds. The fruit doesn't wait to be plucked; it actively rots itself down into the forest floor, dropping the seeds straight into the damp muck to restart the cycle.

​Bonus points for the tiny orange waxy cap mushroom photobombing in the background. Nature’s decay is just as fascinating as its bloom.