Behind Kendra and Tim Griffin’s Cape Cod-style house on the Northwest Side stretches an extra-deep yard that is a clean slate if ever there was one. Extending 107 feet from the back of the house and 30 feet wide, the yard was nearly all weeds when the Griffins moved in last year. Newly married and planning to start a family soon, the couple envisioned the messy lot transformed into a well-designed landscape that would extend their living space outdoors for summer.
In the letter she sent last fall asking to be considered for one of the Home section’s occasional garden make-overs, Kendra Griffin wrote: “Our goals include a pond, horseshoe pits, deck and depth of some sort.” They also wanted a butterfly garden.
She added, “We don’t know where to begin.”
We took the Griffins’ dilemma to Tim Thoelecke, head of the Glenview landscape firm Garden Concepts. Thoelecke came up with a plan for the lot that includes everything the Griffins wanted, as well as demonstrating some key design lessons for others trying to lay out a garden.
Thoelecke identifies few individual plants. Rather, his goal was to establish the overall shapes of the planting area.
Because the garage protrudes into the yard about halfway back, the available planting area has an awkward, backward C shape. In Thoelecke’s hands, that became an asset; he suggested subdividing the outdoor space into three main “rooms”–patio, horseshoe pit and rear lawn.
On a rough draft (not shown) Thoelecke found homes for certain features of the landscape–keeping a deck or patio near the house for entertaining purposes, preserving a long narrow axis for the horseshoe pits, having some open lawn space where kids can tumble.
Then another layer of features were placed in relation to those. Thoelecke wanted to keep the pond near the house for easy access to plumbing and electricity and to keep the pond visible from indoors in winter. Keeping a path from house to garage on one side of the patio and another on the other side to access the yard meant that there was one spot left for the pond, a corner space. As a result, the patio is laid out in a loose X shape.
The Griffins said they wanted to be able to watch their future kids playing from the house’s windows. But because the garage blocks much of the rear space, that isn’t feasible. So Thoelecke tucked a small seating area into a corner behind the garage–when kids play in the rear yard, parents can sit down to watch.
To enhance the feeling of separate rooms, Thoelecke used plantings to suggest doorways from one to another. Going from the patio to the horseshoe lawn, visitors pass between a pair of small trees. Then the horseshoe area and the rear lawn are separated partially by planting beds that swell out from the perimeter of the yard.
The requested butterfly plants are at the back end of the yard, and that’s on purpose. Thoelecke figures because they bloom in summer, nobody will mind wandering all the way back there to see them. Space that’s easily seen from indoors is better used on plants that have year-round appeal, such as ornamental grasses and serviceberry trees.
The couple asked for a deck, but Thoelecke recommended going with a patio instead.
“Most people think a deck is cheaper, but it usually turns out not to be,” he says. “And a good patio material like bluestone will last longer than a wood deck.”
On top of that, the exits from house and garage are at ground level, so a deck would require the Griffins to step up and back down as they traveled the major traffic route. Also, a patio allowed cutouts for a few special plants, such as lavender.
Without specifying individual plants, Thoelecke estimates that installing this plan will cost the Griffins $12,000 or more, with about half going for the patio.
It’s a big investment of time and money, but Kendra Griffin says, “we both grew up in big back yards. Our back yard is where we plan to live all summer, so we want it to be great.”
