Name: Turning Lawns into Living Landscapes: How to Create a Native Habitat at Home
Start: 2026-03-01T14:00:00-05:00
Location: Church of The Saviour Episcopal

Turning Lawns into Living Landscapes: How to Create a Native Habitat at Home

This practical lecture will show you how to incorporate native plants into your home landscape, starting with reducing your lawn and reimagining it as a beautiful, functional garden.
We’ll cover how to thoughtfully replace turf with native plantings, design flowing garden spaces, and create a seamless transition from lawn to landscape that feels intentional and welcoming. You’ll learn how to choose the right plants for your specific growing conditions, ensuring a landscape that is low-maintenance, resilient, and full of year-round interest.
We’ll also explore basic layout and design principles so you can create a space that reflects your personal aesthetic while supporting pollinators, wildlife, and a healthier ecosystem. Along the way, we’ll share reliable sources for purchasing native plants, helping remove common barriers to getting started.
Our goal is to help Denville move away from “green deserts” and toward thriving habitats: one yard at a time.
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Presented by: Erica Gormley, Founder, Summersweet Design
Certified, NY Botanical Garden Sustainable Garden Design
Erica Gormley is the founder of Summersweet Design, a garden design consultancy grounded in the belief that beautiful landscapes can also be sustainable and ecologically beneficial. Certified in Sustainable Garden Design through the New York Botanical Garden, Erica creates landscapes that balance biodiversity, function, and aesthetics. Passionate about New Jersey’s native plants and ecosystems, Erica delivers engaging, approachable lectures that show homeowners how feasible it is to make a positive ecological impact through thoughtful landscape choices. Erica’s work centers on transforming outdoor spaces into vibrant, living landscapes teeming with birds, butterflies, and beneficial insects.
⭐Hosted in conjunction with the Denville Environmental Commission and Rock Ridge Plant, Animal, and Land Stewards⭐