When Jeannie Felknor first moved to the East Village, she was disgusted by the trash that littered the streets there. She says people in the neighborhood told her it was the city's job to clean it up.

But Felknor responded, "We are the city. It's our responsibility to keep things clean."

Now, 10 years later, because of Felknor, there are more than 100 parkway gardens lush with blooming plants and the litter has disappeared. The area has been enhanced in part thanks to the East Village Block and Garden Club.

"For Jeannie, it's more than about pretty flowers, it's about showing how people can come together and make the neighborhood a better place," said Ald. Manny Flores (1st).

Felknor started cleaning up simply by carrying a trash bag with her to collect garbage when she walked her dog. Then one day, she noticed a big pile of trash in front of an abandoned house. Appalled, she started hauling it to the back alley. It took about an hour, she said.

"Then a miracle happened," she says, not hiding her sarcasm. "It got picked up by the garbage guys."

A while later, when a house was being torn down, Felknor was told she could dig up the plants that were in the landscape.

"So we started digging out the most gorgeous columbines, barberries, beautiful daylilies, rose bushes, hosta, peonies, all kinds of different bulbs and I don't even remember what else," she said. The plants were relocated to three parkways.

As Felknor continued to see developers buying up local properties, she would ask if she could have the plants to put in the parkways.

"It just snowballed from there on," she said. "We kept getting plants and so people began to know us as a garden club. We learned that if we cleaned one parkway, it gave other people the inspiration to do theirs as well."

Children started to notice her work, and like the Pied Piper of Wolcott Street, the kids started following Felknor, a former teacher, and helping her with her clean-up work.

Felknor offered them a nickel for each "No Littering" sign they designed, painted and posted. Pretty soon they didn't care about the coins, they joined the clean-up for fun, enlisting even the older kids hanging out on street corners.

"Our area used to be really bad with gang-bangers," said Angelica Gonzalez, 18, who has been helping Felknor she since she was 10. "Now they help out."

"Some of the kids were little when we started, and now they are graduating from high school and are so proud of their neighborhood," Felknor said. "It brings tears to my eyes to see them grow up."

Felknor noticed as the neighborhood started to get cleaner, people started to get friendlier.

"People had not been sitting out on their front stoops as much," she said. But when the kids started working in the gardens, homeowners would come out to talk to them.

The first year she started the cleanup, Felknor held a street-party celebration. "We got a fire truck and tumblers, set out grills and cooked hot dogs, and danced," she said. "It was fun, and every year since then, we throw a party. The kids start pestering me about it starting about April."

Felknor saw that the owner of Innertown Pub on the corner of Winchester and Thomas streets planted his window boxes every year, but had a full-sun grassy area along the side of his tavern that would be perfect for a prairie garden.

"I wondered what this neighborhood looked like 200 or 300 years ago. It was country then," she said.

She applied and received for a grant from Green Corps Chicago to put in a naturalized garden and convinced the reluctant tavern owner, who mostly planted marigolds and petunias, to go along. Now, the side space has large stone ledges arranged in a circle as a council ring, foot paths, and blooming native plants that attract butterflies and look attractive all season long.

"It's such a neat contrast, to see that tavern and this beautiful garden," she said.

While a professional landscaper needs a permit to plant a parkway, homeowners are free to go ahead and plant those areas in front of their own homes without any formal paperwork, Felknor said. Of course, she always obtains consent before planting her gardens.

"We would never garden a parkway without the homeowners wanting us to do it," she said.

Homeowners should not be intimidated if they don't have any gardening skills, she said. "If people aren't gardeners and want their parkway to look nice, they can hire someone to come and get them started, then all they have to do is water and maintain the space," she said.

And learning to garden is not hard, she said. The key is not to worry and just have fun with the activity, even if you make mistakes. They are correctable, she said.

"People need to relax and not make gardening harder than what it is," she said.

The change in East Village goes beyond making the neighborhood look good, Felknor says. There is an increased sense of safety and security, she says. Neighbors know one another better and are friendlier.

But nothing can top the good feeling that comes from being able to see, smell and touch the parkway gardens. For some people, that can change a bad day into a good day, Felknor said.

"It means so much to people who walk by these gardens every day," she said. "They are getting a glimpse of joy."