A clump of golden bamboo rustles in the breeze as turtles glide across the pond below. Hummingbirds sip from blue salvia blossoms and dewdrops shimmer on the leaves of bananas and palms. From under the Japanese maple comes a cricket serenade. As dusk settles, flames dance over the fire pit while Club Trini’s steel drum music fills the air.
“We’re not in French Polynesia, but we like to think we are,” says Robbi Hursthouse, a garden play therapist at Children’s Memorial Medical Center in Chicago. On these sultry summer evenings and weekends, she and her husband, landscape architect Bob Hursthouse, relax in their Naperville back yard, a shady setting that lets them recall a special vacation on Bora Bora Island in the South Pacific.
Tucked behind a 1960s split-level ranch house that fronts a busy street, the garden is a haven for Bob Hursthouse, 46, president of the Illinois Landscape Contractors Association and president of R.S. Hursthouse Inc. (www.hursthouse.com), an award-winning residential landscape firm in Bolingbrook. During the past 26 years, he has designed and installed thousands of landscapes and has taught countless classes to Illinois landscape professionals.
“I’ve managed to find a balance between life and landscaping,” he says. “The landscape should be an extension of who you are and your lifestyle. It’s way more than just the plants — it’s the experience.”
Minimum effort, maximum pleasure
And that’s why you won’t find him out there after work dividing daylilies, deadheading coneflowers or coddling fussy plants.
He designed the quarter-acre lot as a low-maintenance, attractive retreat that looks good long after the flowers fade. “Perennials can be a lot of work,” he says. “This is much more of a landscape than a garden.”
Two silver maples, the remnants of a vegetable garden and several overhead utility lines were present when they moved in 19 years ago. “There was nothing too compelling here,” Hursthouse says. “A garden should be mysterious and interesting. Visitors should be drawn into the space.”
Their back yard is slowly revealed from the side gate where a lush climbing hydrangea smothers the entryway with fragrant flowers. He replaced a slim ribbon of concrete with a generous bluestone patio, which became a gathering spot early on. The perimeter plantings, a pond, fire pit and hot tub were gradually added.
French doors align with the pond and bamboo, which is corralled by the patio and lawn. Bamboo runners that appear near the lawn are removed each spring.
The tall stems remain semi-evergreen except during severe winters. “The landscape is a 365-day environment,” Hursthouse says. “You are in it visually, if not physically, all the time. If I’m inside cooking, I’ll light the fire pit because I enjoy looking at it from the kitchen window especially during winter. It’s a dramatic element.”
The indoor walls are painted a mossy green making a nearly seamless transition into the garden. Couches and chairs are angled to look into the back yard or out the front window.
A wide-spreading `Prairifire’ crab apple screens the street and presents a curtain of pink flowers in spring, coppery-orange leaves in fall and berries through winter. Low-growing and disease-resistant, a `Sugar Tyme’ crab apple replaced a tall parkway tree that had been topped after growing into overhead wires.
Room to romp
The garden has evolved with the family’s needs and desires. Their son, Scott, 18, spent countless hours playing Wiffle ball on the back-yard lawn.
He occasionally turned the sandbox into a lake or surveyed wildlife with other 5-year-olds from the “spaceship-turned-bat-tower,” a tentlike playhouse built by Hursthouse, an avid outdoorsman and Boy Scout leader.
“We made a place for kids to play,” Robbi says. “We didn’t want a place where they couldn’t touch the plants or throw a ball.”
The lawn was gradually downsized and the narrow perimeter plantings morphed into a sweeping border of flowering trees and shrubs that don’t require constant pruning or fertilizing. Fragrant Viburnum juddii, Viburnum `Mariesii,’ `Autumn Embers’ witch hazel, magnolia, `Forest Pansy’ redbuds, bottlebrush buckeye, Japanese tree lilac, cranberry cotoneaster, arborvitae, `Green Velvet’ boxwood, oakleaf hydrangeas, Hydrangea `Endless Summer,’ caryopteris and Knockout roses create privacy and enclosure. A white pine and a Canadian hemlock were planted for a North Woods feel.
“We utilize ground covers greatly,” Hursthouse says. “They are fantastic for providing continuity in the garden.” Pachysandra, European ginger, vinca, wintercreeper and English ivy thrive along with several varieties of hosta, including `Sum and Substance,’ `Frances Williams,’ `August Moon’ and `Patriot.’ Pots of tuberous begonias, red-leaved bananas, strobilanthes, coleus and salvia add color from spring through fall.
A vine-clad tower is Robbi’s potting area and cold frame and serves as a spot where Scott practices his blacksmithing hobby. An orange tree, which began as a 4-inch cutting that Bob Hursthouse’s parents gave to him in high school, is now a huge specimen in a pot on the patio. It winters in his office come fall.
Living tributes
A clump form of sugar maple was planted when Scott was born. “My dad did the same for me. He planted a 5-foot saucer magnolia,” Hursthouse says.
“When my dad passed, I planted a coffee tree at the church in his honor.” A saucer magnolia was planted in their garden to honor Robbi’s mother.
A wide antique clay brick walk replaced a concrete path that led to the front door. One of Hursthouse’s pet peeves is the ubiquitous narrow sidewalk that forces visitors to walk single file to the front door where there typically is a small landing pad.
“The front entry foyer should be repeated on the outside of the house so your guests aren’t standing on a string of concrete,” he says. “You need a space to pause and reflect, perhaps sit on a bench to experience the front garden.”
Jim and Danielle Eldridge of Aurora hired Hursthouse in 1987 to renovate an overgrown landscape in Naperville. When they decided to build a new home in Aurora, they called him in again before the ground was broken.
“He has a knack for looking at a piece of property and envisioning it complete,” Jim Eldridge says.
Hursthouse’s career began in Naperville Central High School when he designed his first landscape plan. He met Robbi at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where they both graduated in 1980, each with a bachelor’s degree in plant and soil science.
“Our drafting tables were head to head in school,” Bob says. “We were really competitive,” Robbi adds, “but we worked on a project together and the rest is history.”
Transitions
After graduation, he worked for a suburban landscape company for nearly 10 years and one day realized that he had little time during spring and summer for his wife and toddler.
To better manage his family time, he formed his own company in 1990, hired five employees and bought a truck. He now has 32 employees and seven trucks. “We work a five-day week all year long. People need time with their families,” Hursthouse says. “And our design work is just as fresh in fall as it is in spring.”
The firm’s projects are split between designing sites for new houses and renovating existing landscapes. “New construction should always be integrated and coordinated with a landscape architect from the get-go,” he says. “Home builders are good from the exterior walls in. What we bring to the dance is art and science. We understand the grading and engineering and what it takes to site a house.”
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Make it meaningful
Landscape architect Bob Hursthouse offers ways to create meaningful home landscapes.
– Take time to plan ahead. If you’re renovating a landscape, do it in phases beginning with the hardscape. Do things such as walkways, patios and arbors. Plant large trees, shrubs and ground covers next and do the perennials last.
– Call in the pros. If you are building a new house, call in a landscape architect before the digging starts.
– Take note of gardens you admire. If you are working with a landscape contractor, clip pictures from magazines and make a note of addresses of homes with gardens you like.
– Create a compelling front-entry sequence. Your entry should draw visitors to the house and the front door. It should be safe–a well-lit path at night and no shrubs blocking the view of the front door–as well as natural and free-flowing.
– Use trees, shrubs and ground covers to create low-maintenance borders that provide privacy around the property. Stick with clump-forming, non-aggressive perennials, such as baptisia, hostas, liatris, lungwort, pulmonaria, Russian sage and salvia.
– Plant something special. Plant a tree to celebrate a birth or life of a family member.
– Add something meaningful like a fire or water feature. It doesn’t have to break the bank. A fire feature can be something small and inexpensive like a chimenea up to an elaborate $6,000 fire pit.
— Nina Koziol
