"Ripples of Renewal"

The Chicago River flows through the heart of one of the most beautiful and architecturally amazing cities in the world. Boats pass beneath its bridges, people gather along the Riverwalk, and sunlight dances across the water while towering buildings reflect on its surface. But tucked along the river’s edge is something unexpected: gardens that float!

These floating gardens do much more than add flowers and greenery to the already beautiful Riverwalk. They are part of an effort to bring life back to a river with a long and complicated environmental history. They create habitat for fish and other aquatic creatures beneath the water while providing food and shelter for birds and pollinators above it. Beauty with a purpose—my favorite kind!

The gardens featured in my painting Ripples of Renewal are located in a section of the Chicago Riverwalk called The Jetty, between Wells and Franklin Streets. This area includes a series of piers and floating wetland gardens designed to help people interact with and learn about the river’s ecology.

The downtown section of the Chicago River is deep, with hard walls and very little natural shoreline. Although the river provides an impressive setting for Chicago’s magnificent architecture, it does not naturally offer many of the shallow, rocky, or vegetated areas that young fish and other aquatic creatures need. So, people found a creative way to put some of that missing habitat back.

The floating gardens are held in frames attached to the Riverwalk’s piers. While flowers and native plants grow above the surface, their roots extend down into the water. Beneath the gardens are special underwater structures that provide places for small fish to hide, rest, and feed. Algae, tiny invertebrates, and other organisms can grow on these submerged surfaces, helping form the base of the river’s food web.

And where there are plants, insects, and fish, birds are not far behind!

Ducks and other waterbirds can find food and shelter around the gardens, while fish-eating birds benefit from a healthier aquatic habitat. Pollinators visit the flowers growing above the water, creating a tiny but important ecosystem in the middle of downtown Chicago. Surrounded by concrete, steel, glass, boats, bridges, restaurants, and thousands of people, these floating wetlands offer wildlife a much-needed place to live.

I find that remarkable.

As wonderful as these floating gardens are, though, they cannot heal the Chicago River all by themselves. Pollution, sewer overflows, strong currents, heavy boat traffic, and the river’s hard walls still make life difficult for fish and other aquatic creatures. The gardens provide small pockets of food and shelter, but scientists believe much larger habitat improvements—including restoring more of the river’s natural shoreline—are needed.

Researchers have seen fish feeding around the floating wetlands, but studies suggest that the gardens’ overall effect on the fish population has been limited. City workers have also found dead fish near the gardens, raising questions about whether the habitat might attract fish to an area where the water conditions are still not healthy enough for them. This does not mean that the gardens caused the fish to die, but it does show just how complicated environmental restoration can be.

The floating gardens are not a cure for all that challenges the Chicago River. They are a beginning.

My painting looks along the Chicago River from the Riverwalk, where historic bridgehouses and warm brick buildings stand alongside gleaming modern skyscrapers. In the foreground, the golden flowers of a floating garden reach toward the sunlight. They soften the hard edges of the city and draw our eyes back to the living river beneath all that architecture.

The title Ripples of Renewal represents more than the ripples we see dancing across the water. Every positive change creates ripples of its own. Planting one floating garden may seem like a small gesture in such a large city, but it can provide shelter for fish, food for insects and birds, cleaner water, and a place where people can stop and see the river differently.

One garden can inspire another. One restored habitat can help bring back another species. One person who learns to care about the river can inspire someone else to care, too.

The Chicago River will always carry the marks of its past, but it does not have to be defined by them. These floating gardens show what can happen when engineering, environmental science, creativity, and community come together. They remind us that even in the middle of a busy city, nature can return when we make room for it.

As an environmental artist—and someone who still carries a deep love for Chicago—I wanted this painting to celebrate that sense of hope. Ripples of Renewal is about a river coming back to life, one floating garden, one small creature, and one ripple at a time.