Our beautiful grounds and Rain Garden are open year-round!
Meet Bill Mitchell, Our Watershed Steward - The Minimalist Gardener
Bill Mitchell, Naturalist Gardener, has a BA in Government and a MS in Community Development from Southern Illinois University. Bill has a 30-year career in waste recycling. Bill has worked hard to maintain our wonderful Rain Garden and, as he says, the garden is healthy and ready to grow!
During this time, he built and later sold a respectable recycling business that introduced many innovations and 'firsts' to the practice of recycling, had a stint developing recycling systems for municipalities in Oak Park, IL, Elmhurst, IL, and Racine, WI, and worked 10 years as a recyclables quality executive and Materials Recovery Facilities manager for Laidlaw Waste Systems & Waste Management, Inc. He retired from WMI in 2000 and purchased a residential window cleaning franchise which he sold in 2017.
Since then Bill returned to environmental work becoming a certified Watershed Steward & UM - 'Woods In Your Backyard' practitioner and a student of Chesapeake Bay restoration and clean-up initiatives. He developed The Minimalist Garden business model as a result of knowledge gained through lifelong advocacy for sound environmental management and an affinity for plants and wildlife. In 2018 he was awarded the 'Peoples' Choice' honor for the Minimalist Garden Business Plan presented at the ACB/CBT Watershed Forum. MInimalist Garden Inc. presently does contract work for ACB installing rain barrels and Rain Gardens and Conservation landscapes for the DC - RiverSmart program.
Bill has provided us with this very enjoyable video of the Captain Avery Museum in rain:
