Winnetka’s secret garden

Walking up to an Evanston Grows farmstand, you may be surprised to not only see produce given away for free, but also beautiful bouquets of flowers. 

They are from the Backyard Flower Lab, a three-acre garden in Winnetka that grows flowers and fruit trees and donates the majority of the harvests. 

April Potterfield and her husband, Russell, moved to their farm in Winnetka in 2012 and started off growing vegetables. One year, after realizing that they would be out of town for vegetable harvest season, April Potterfield suggested they switch to flowers instead. Her husband agreed and asked that April get involved with the project as well. 

“I walked around the garden and thought, ‘What does one do with all of these cut flowers?’ I had zinnias and dahlias and all kinds of things, and it felt a little bit selfish to have that many,” she said. 

April Potterfield first connected with Bella Ru Catering In Highland Park and wound up giving away 150 bouquets at their first event in August 2022. 

“It felt right,” she said. “I grew up in a very poor rural town and although the project seems a little bit crazy, you’re giving flowers to people who really need other services. I’m just drawn to putting this beauty into other people’s hands.” 

She started reaching out to more nonprofits and food pantries and has now donated more than 10,000 bouquets and 3,500 pounds of produce. 

“Showing up to a food pantry can be a very vulnerable thing, and so to get a little something that’s beautiful and that you don’t need and that you maybe don’t have access to, I think there’s some dignity in that,” April Potterfield said.

The garden also occasionally hosts field trips from the neighboring Hubbard Woods Elementary School.

She said the students would bring journals and begin to draw something in the garden.

“It was really incredible to watch kids get so focused on one thing that they just lost track of time,” April Potterfield said.

As the seasons have come and gone, she has learned a lot, including how to teach people how to care for flowers. 

So now, each bouquet comes with instructions.

“We had a volunteer who said, ‘Many people don’t know what to do with cut flowers. They don’t know to take them home and put them in water,'” she said, “so we now put a sticker on our flower wraps with instructions for care.”

April Potterfield is now entering her third summer with this project, and she hopes to continue having many more. Her efforts were even recently recognized in the Village of Winnetka’s annual Green Awards.

You can support the Backyard Flower Lab by visiting here. For more information, check out the flower lab’s website.

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