Gardens are like ourselves. They are fragile and require care while struggling for a measure of permanence.
Obviously, many of us neglect our inner needs, just as we neglect our gardens, and we compensate with visits to marvelous places kept by other people-such as the Botanic Garden in Glencoe and the Morton Arboretum in Lisle.
Beyond those large and popular settings, other gardens in our area are smaller and less known. They are not secret, but they are often quiet, and if they are unknown, so much the better. A garden that surprises is a particular pleasure. There are many such places, both wild and formal, that do what all gardens are meant to do. They pierce the mundane veneer of daily life. Here are just a few:
– In Evanston, the Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University not only pierces the veneer, but flees clear into medieval times. The small plot, next to the chapel at Garrett Seminary, is fully surrounded by high hawthorn hedges and narrow, barely hidden paths. ”It is a place of flirtations,” says Anita Philipsborn, a member of the Garden Club of Evanston, which cares for the garden.
The history of a garden is no trivial thing, and this one is curious for several reasons, not the least of which is that Jens Jensen designed it. Shakespeare gardens-with plants mentioned in plays by the Bard-were popular throughout America in 1915, the year the Garden Club built this one. For one thing, it was nearing the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare`s death; for another, America was in deep sympathy with England, then fighting the Germans without us.
This garden is filled with annuals, perennials and trees that were mentioned in the plays. Roses, lavender, daisies and many other plants figure in Shakespearean metaphors still used by English speakers. A famous one comes from ”Hamlet”: ”There`s rosemary, that`s for remembrance . . . /And there is pansies, that`s for thoughts.” Another from ”The Winter`s Tale”:
”Here`s flowers for you:/Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram.”
Gardens are hard to care for, and one with this much history is hard to alter. Introducing new features requires careful negotiation among the club`s 70 members-as did some new clematis last year, and a course of brick cobbles around the borders.
Nevertheless, there is something timeless about this garden. Philipsborn describes a past member of the garden club who used to walk through the garden reciting passages from memory. And a visitor imagines the future, when new crane`s bill spills over from beds onto the turf, and the sweet alyssum self- seeds in the cracks between the bricks.
– When the renowned landscape architect Franz Lipp was asked to build a garden around the grounds at Cantigny Park in 1967, he had to do some negotiating as well. The trustees of the Wheaton estate-left for public use by the late Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick-had a typical English garden in mind. That would mean a wild and overflowing look, with a succession of dazzling color.
But Lipp demurred. The property was large, 250 acres (excluding the golf course). The large plants that usually anchor English gardens of such size, azaleas and rhododendrons, do not do well in Illinois. Instead Lipp designed something suited to the environment-and perhaps to the 1960s when formal gardens were more in vogue.
Lipp planted an abundance of trees, and his variety of beech trees, for example, now rivals the collection of that species at much larger arboreta. The gardens also feature lush evergreen arranged in regular sections. Tall arborvitae forms walls. Beds are punctuated with juniper-and filled, just now, with annuals such as impatiens, petunias, fuchsia and begonias.
But informality has wriggled its way in at Cantigny. Bob Waterman, newly appointed director of grounds, recently restored a ”lower baroque garden.”
This section is less manicured than the rest and perhaps more appealing to the tastes of contemporary gardeners. Perennials such as iris, straw flowers, bachelor buttons and daylilies grow amid ornamental grasses-each flowering at its own time. ”People can come once a week, and notice that this section is always changing,” says Waterman.
– Gardens are optimistic places. ”It`s always encouraging to think that this kind of beauty can be created by people,” says Don Newcomb, chairman of the horticulture department at Triton College in River Grove. He was musing out loud why the college`s Botanical Garden has become so popular for students and townspeople alike.
Some people remember when this three-acre plot, on the edge of the school`s football field, was part of a drive-in theater. That is positive enough, but there are more subtle things attracting people to different sections of the garden: A Shakespeare garden is labeled with quotations. A rock garden now has petunias, columbine and nasturtiums bending lightly among the boulders. A new herb garden is just beginning to fill the air with thyme, marjoram, santolina and the fragrance of cocoa-hull mulch (which emits a distinct scent when crunched under foot).
More industrious than ornamental is Triton`s vegetable garden, but it still draws people in to see what they should be growing at home. It also reminds Newcomb of a subliminal but strong attraction: ”For thousands of years, gardens have meant survival.”
– There`s something equally basic drawing people to the Bahai House of Worship in Wilmette, an unexpected but lavish pleasure for many people who visit. The temple is on a six-acre tract within view of Lake Michigan, with avenues of junipers and beds for perennials and annuals interlacing trees and hedges.
The impressive size and care of this garden is not left to whim or fancy. Gardens are a traditional part of the Bahai faith; this is because the prophet-founder Bahaullah (1817-1892) was imprisoned by Ottomans in a city so polluted and barren that birds flying over fell dead.
In the last years of the prophet`s life, he lived in a home lush with foliage, and gardens became a metaphor for the Bahai message of peace among all people. ”The diversity of flowers is compared to the diversity of humanity,” says Ronald Precht, spokesman for the National Spiritual Assembly of Bahais. ”We believe that the diversity of humanity is like a garden.”
There are nine sections of this garden, just as there are nine sides of the temple, and nine is symbolic in the Bahai faith of culmination or unity. Within these sections, some beds have flowers all of one color. Others are mixed-now with begonias, marigolds, petunias and other species in a harmonious array of colors. The message is obvious.
Also obvious is the practical effect of amazing gardens growing where people worship. ”When the garden looks nice and there are many flowers,”
says head gardener Jose Rubio, ”people naturally want to come back.”
The wheres and whens Here are addresses and hours of the gardens mentioned in the accompanying story. All are free of charge.
Bahai House of Worship, 112 Linden Ave., Wilmette. 708-256-6552. Summer hours for the garden are 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.
Cantigny Park, 1S151 Winfield Rd., Wheaton. 708-668-5161. Summer hours are 7 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. every day.
Triton College Botanical Garden, 2000 N. 5th Ave., River Grove (on the north end of the East Campus). 708-456-0300. Always open.
The Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University, 2121 Sheridan Rd., Evanston (beside Garrett Seminary). Always open.
