William Moss has loved nature and the outdoors since childhood.   Gardening is just an extension of that passion.   The effects of his gardening efforts on the local ecosystem were intriguing and inspiring.   His gardens provided nectar for swallowtails and skippers, shelter for carpenter bees and writing spiders, and an endless supply of voles and rabbits for the neighborhood red tailed hawk.

On his websites, www.garden.org/urbangardening & www.wemoss.org , he chronicles the challenges of gardening in a city and discusses horticultural techniques.    William also covers a wide array of ¡§greening¡¨ topics ranging from soil contamination and remediation to eco-friendly pest management to the intricacies of native habitats.

To comprehend and better explain the complex life-webs right outside his door, William enrolled in the extramural Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences program offered by the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.   His focus is on creating wildlife corridors in urban areas.   Completion of Masters of Science work is expected in 2008.

Concurrently, he has sought out opportunities to be involved in local environmental projects.   While at the Chicago Department of the Environment, he worked with WRD, an environmental construction company, at North Park Village Nature Center.   William supervised Greencorps crews and volunteers and they removed invasive plants and replaced them with native trees, shrubs, and perennials.  At this point William began to focus more on presenting lectures, and he joined the Chicago Botanic Garden as an environmental educator.