Gardening greenhorns and green thumbs alike will find a crop of easy-to-transplant ideas at this year’s Chicago Flower & Garden Show. Just as every picture tells a story, each of the carefully designed and planted plots will present ideas worth cultivating in the back- or front-yard landscape.
Traveling through these well-tended gardens, you not only will find visual stimulation and relief from the long, gray winter, but also fliers, design plans and experts primed to answer planting, growing and maintenance questions.
Here is a preview of some of the gardens and the lessons they have to teach. (The numbers given for the gardens refer to the map on Page 7.)
For another view, check out television specials featuring the Chicago Flower & Garden Show at 11:30 a.m. March 12 on WGN-Ch. 9 and at 1 p.m. March 12 on CLTV.
Mountain vistas
You might think you’ve wandered far from Chicago when you tour “Mountain Vistas in Garden Settings,” (Gardens 10 and 16) a set of four gardens featuring dwarf conifers and plants native to the Rocky and Appalachian Mountains of the U.S., as well as European and Asian mountain ranges. Designed by Richard Eyre of Rich’s Foxwillow Pines Nursery in Woodstock and Joseph Pollina & Sons in Northbrook, the gardens will feature slow-growing trees along with perennials and alpine plants that are as at home on the central plains as they are on mountain peaks. The Rocky Mountain garden will showcase almost three dozen varieties of pines, yews, spruces and firs ranging from 3 to 12 feet in height, along with 300 varieties of alpine plants, including sedum, heather and saxifraga. The Appalachian garden will show how to combine dwarf conifers, hostas and rhododendrons in a shade-loving garden. The European garden will put the spotlight on dwarf conifers, with weeping and prostrate forms, while the Asian garden will pay tribute to simplicity and serenity.
You also will get a look at plants, including 100 varieties of hosta,that flourish in shady or woodland gardens.
Beckoning wildlife
Bird and butterfly watchers will want to make a stop at “A Wildlife Sanctuary and Private Retreat” (Garden 22), brimming with plants designed to captivate both wildlife and gardeners.
Sid’s Greenhouse and Garden Center in Palos Hills has put together a plan that welcomes winged creatures with life’s necessities: food, water and shelter. Flowering crab-apple and hawthorn trees will furnish both food and shelter for the birds, while holly berries will help sustain birds through the winter. Spruces and pines afford protected nesting nooks. Nectar-rich perennials such as butterfly bush, bleeding heart, and white and pink sea thrift will call butterflies. A stream will flow into a pond, inviting all garden creatures to drink or cool off with a splash.
Here, you can learn to design “a garden that is wildlife-attracting, but that also is pleasing to you,” says Paul Witry, nursery manager at Sid’s.
Vegetable success
Rows of peppers, soybeans, squash, wheat and corn will line up in front of a faux facade of the Chicago High School of Agriculture Sciences at “The Last Farm in Chicago” (Garden 27). With plants started in greenhouses by the school’s students, this miniature farm field will depict the crops sown, nurtured and harvested on the school’s 75 acres at 111th Street and Pulaski Road.
Staffed by students, the display will offer planting techniques, information about the magnet school and just-for-kids nutritional activities. But the thing you may find most interesting is the corn, says Tina LaPierre, a horticulture instructor at the school. Crafters will like the broom corn for making homemade brooms. Indian corn and its cousin, baby Indian corn, boast multicolored ears that mature just in time for autumnal decorations. Of course, there will be sweet corn. Students will be on hand to answer planting and growing questions, says LaPierre.
How dry they are
“Adenium to Zamiocaulcas: Cactus and Succulents from Around the World” (Garden 9) will show more than 200 plants, representing 100 species of cacti and succulents,at this landscape created by Ted’s Greenhouse in Tinley Park.
The niftiest idea sprouting from Daniel Biernacki’s design is the use of cacti and succulents in the Chicago garden. For example, check out the flat, rounded leaves of a winter-hardy opuntia cactus that can be planted in Midwestern soil.
Hang time
Focused on creating vertical interest in the garden, “Up, Up and Away” (Garden 29) will be a group of containers demonstrating how to enliven eye-level spaces with wrap-around fence boxes, fence-post pots, hanging baskets and globular spheres, all planted with cascades of lesser-known annuals. Dozens of unusual plants–including the cloudlike bacopa and tiny multihued Babylon verbena–will mix it up with traditional coleus and other foliage for 60 different compositions.
Designed and planted by the staff at the University of Illinois Extension Service in Countryside, “Up, Up and Away” also will offer recipes for success. A booklet containing designs for the displayed containers and general culture tips will be available. But the most important thing to take home is an understanding of how to plant and maintain containers correctly, says garden designer Greg Stack.
