Pictured above: Cancer survivor Janice Aull (left) and Marlyssa Crow, program manager, strategic energy and sustainability at Endeavor Health, in the native pollinator garden at Endeavor Health Highland Park Hospital.
This article was originally published on the Natural Awakenings Chicago website and is republished with permission.
Looking out the window of Endeavor Health Highland Park Hospital’s cancer infusion center, patient Janice Aull saw opportunity.
On the plus side, Aull liked that the health system had already installed a pollinator garden, offering a healing vista for patients and team members. But, it needed fresh plantings and a good pruning to eradicate invasive plants threatening to overpower the terrain.
“The purple loosestrife especially had spread like crazy and was just taking over the whole area,” said Aull, a management consultant who is also a certified Illinois Master Naturalist and the co-founder of Aull Nature Preserve in Lake Bluff.
“I just wanted to get out there and weed.”
A respected leader in the northern Illinois natural preservation community, the cancer survivor worked through her network of Endeavor Health hospital nurses and team members she’d met during her years of care at the hospital. Aull soon found her way to the hospital’s Green Team and made her pitch for pollinators.
Success! The team loved her ideas and invited Aull to consult on the restoration of the Highland Park Hospital native plantings, as well as advise on future garden expansion across the health system’s nine hospitals.
Which is how, on a beautiful fall Monday in early October, Aull found herself on the other side of the infusion center’s glass window.
Finally standing in Highland Park Hospital’s garden, her hands in the soil, she weeded and mulched alongside a posse of local volunteers from environmental organizations and members of Endeavor Health’s Green Team. The group worked on the sunny afternoon, planting native trees and bushes in the first session of the year-long restoration project for the garden.
The volunteers came from local organizations focused on protecting and creating natural habitats, including: Growing Native Habitat Lake Bluff; Habitat Highland Park; Monarchs, Milkweed, and More; Openlands; and Wild Ones Lake to Prairie.
Pictured above: Aull, center with sign, and other members of Endeavor Health’s Green Team and local volunteers stand in the native pollinator garden at Highland Park Hospital.
“The event was fantastic. Everyone’s enthusiasm for our work was contagious,” said Aull. “This project has deeply affected me, demonstrating what passion and collaboration can achieve. Most important, the outcome will benefit and heal both people and nature.”
“We are so grateful to Janice and the amazing group of expert volunteers, all of them longtime gardeners and natives’ champions from our local communities,” said Marlyssa Crow, program manager, strategic energy and sustainability at Endeavor Health. “Native gardening, paired with repurposed cardboard to improve soil quality, shows Endeavor Health’s commitment to circularity.”
“Our native and pollinator gardens, along with our edible healing gardens, reflect Endeavor Health’s longstanding commitment to supporting the health and wellbeing of the communities we serve, both within and beyond our hospital walls,” said Michael Fiore, assistant vice president, clinical operations and environmental health and safety at Endeavor Health. “We are deeply grateful to Janice for her leadership, passion and dedication to bringing these meaningful initiatives to life.”
At her next Highland Park Hospital infusion appointment, Aull will once again swivel her chair to admire the pollinator garden through the window. She’s already looking forward to helping oversee the scattering of seeds in late fall, and planting more native shrubs, grasses and flowers next spring.
“I love my team of doctors and nurses at Endeavor Health, but nature really is our greatest healer,” said Aull.
Read about Aull’s cancer treatment journey at Endeavor Health.
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