This week we begin showcasing the winners of this year’s Glorious Gardens Contest. We received hundreds of splendid entries, submitted by gardeners with passion and soul to spare.
Now through Sept. 13, we will present each of the five winning gardens with their owners’ stories of how they came to be and the lessons they learned along the way.
To everyone who took the time to enter, a huge thank you for sharing your gardens with us — and the rest of the world.
Everyone can get a glimpse of the more than 1,000 photos submitted to the contest, as well as a chance to vote for their favorites in the People’s Choice competition. Go to gloriousgardens.chicagotribune.com/contest.
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“Everybody tells me it’s an old lady’s plant,” Ted Szydlowski says of the spectacular lavender border in his garden in Petoskey, Mich. “But I really like plants that work as hard as we do out in the garden. It’s in bloom for about a month and a half.”
A photo of that lavender helped Szydlowski and his wife, Nora, become the fifth runner-up in the 2009 Glorious Gardens Contest. Judge Denise Corkery of the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe called it “exquisite.”
They were lucky the lavender was ready for its close-up by the late July contest deadline, Ted Szydlowski says, because many perennials, such as Russian sage and butterfly weed, weren’t blooming yet. He figures the cool, wet weather this year has the garden running about three weeks late.
But in a hilltop garden of nearly an acre, with — best guess — 5,000 to 6,000 perennials and shrubs, there was bound to be something to photograph.
The garden is so large that the couple have divided responsibilities. Nora Szydlowski, who has gardened all her life, handles the shade garden, with hostas, heuchera, astilbe, clematis and goatsbeard, on the side that faces Lake Michigan. Ted Szydlowski, not a gardener until he retired as a manufacturing executive, handles the sunny garden. His side has sweeping views inland over Round Lake and, in the fall, vistas of sensational yellow and orange leaf color.
They meet for cocktails or coffee in any of six sitting areas. “We walk through our gardens and bounce ideas off each other and get ideas from one another,” she says. “Sometimes you wonder, when I retire, what are we going to do with all our time? But we’re busy.”
They have plenty to do, even with plants chosen to be tough enough for a Zone 5 site that gets up to 12 feet of snow in the winter and a few inches of rain all summer.
In the sun garden alone, Ted Szydlowski tends to twig dogwood, Asiatic and Oriental lilies, thousands of daylilies, yarrow, salvia, coreopsis, Shasta daisies, coral bells, dianthus, yellow foxgloves, Oriental poppies, chrysanthemum, blazing star, lupine, daffodils, a carpet of creeping phlox and about four dozen hydrangea shrubs. He is especially fond of the classic white-blooming Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle.’
His lavender walk was inspired by pictures of southern French fields and English borders in garden books. He has succeeded in growing lavender where many fail, he thinks, because he heavily amended the soil with sand before planting so it drains superbly. Lavender plants are winter-hardy but “they can’t sit in the winter in ice and water,” he says.
When the Szydlowskis bought the house nine years ago, there was no garden. “It was basically just woodland,” Nora Szydlowski says. “You couldn’t see our house because it was just covered with trees.” They had dozens of trees removed to open the views of both lakes and create gardening space.
Doing all the work themselves, they collected the glacially deposited rocks they found whenever they dug and used them to create a Japanese-style stone river. You might have thought that would be enough stone.
But no: The Szydlowskis discovered that countertop fabricators often sell granite scraps cheap. Hauling it all themselves in a Honda CR-V with a valiant suspension, they collected enough small slabs to create a 4-foot-wide path all around the sun garden. Then they added a huge granite boulder for an accent, a granite lighthouse sculpture and granite benches. “Our friends call it the Granite Park Garden,” Ted Szydlowski says.
Judge Mary Eysenbach, director of conservatories for the Chicago Park District, praised the garden for its massing of perennials and its “good mix of intimate and wide open” space.
The couple entered the contest at the urging of their daughter, who lives in Chicago.
“A big garden is a lot of work no matter how easy you make it,” says Ted Szydlowski.
To which his wife adds, “Everything is a learning experience. No matter how many years we’ve gardened there’s always a surprise for you. It’s something that’s a lot of fun.”
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5 tips for a glorious garden from Ted and Nora Szydlowski
1. Research and plan. “My wife and I must have read five dozen books on gardening,” he says. She urges gardeners to “start slowly, to walk your garden and really plan ahead on paper.” At the same time, he says it’s a mistake to try to create the whole garden at one time before you’ve worked on it enough to get a feel for what you like. “Do a little, plan a little, do a little more, plan a little more.”
2. Amend the soil before you plant. The Szydlowskis’ hilltop property is split between sandy soil and clay soil, and they have added large amounts of peat moss and homemade compost wherever they plant. “In some cases I was in such a hurry I didn’t do it,” Nora Szydlowski says. “And of course I had to go back and redo it,” she added, when plants didn’t thrive.
3. Mulch. The Szydlowskis spread shredded wood mulch every spring, to keep weeds down and hold in moisture over the summer on their exposed hilltop. In the early days it took three truckloads, but as the perennials have filled in they are down to one. “It’s really improved the soil over the years,” Ted Szydlowski says.
4. Choose plants to minimize effort. The Szydlowskis’ property is screened from the road by a hedge of dwarf burning bush (Euonymous alatus ‘Compactus’). This cultivar only grows about 5 feet high, so the bushes don’t need to be pruned to avoid blocking views of Round Lake.
5. Right plant, right place. “You have to go with what nature gives you,” Ted Szydlowski says. “If you’re in the sun and sand, you have to go with plants that go well in sun and sand. You can’t fight Mother Nature. It’s too much work.”
— B.B.
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A judge’s observations
From Glorious Gardens judge Karla Lynch, manager of horticulture education at The Morton Arboretum:
Why it’s a winner: This large property contains a variety of microclimates, from full shade to full sun. The owners addressed the shady areas near the house with a cottage-type wild garden; because the house appears to be a Swiss-type cottage, this choice ties the home into the setting.
Toward the open edges of the lake, where the property becomes sunny, the owners developed a formal sundial garden, where a lighthouse sculpture and sundial punctuate the geometric beds. Further along is a taste of Tuscany: With the deep blue of the lake as a backdrop, the owners drew attention to this glorious view with a lavender-edged stone path. The line of dark green upright junipers provides good contrast to the lavender and keeps your eye on the lake view.
Lessons from this garden: Select a garden theme that dovetails with the function, microclimate and architectural details of nearby structures. When creating landscapes that are not in relationship with a nearby structure, use the best feature of the space to identify the theme. Lastly, determine a way to unify the various parts of a large garden through repetition. It only takes the repetition of one element to show that all of these things belong together. Consider repeating a paving material, a plant type or the type of edge given to the planting beds.
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