Gardeners and the merely curious alike will be in a unique position to enjoy the 13th annual Oak Park and River Forest Garden Walk, held this Saturday, July 8 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Garden Club of Oak Park-River Forest.
The self-guided tour highlights 12 local gardens, including one influenced by Italian heritage and a sprawling Victorian garden filled with unique garden art. “If there is any theme connecting the gardens we chose this year, it would be that they are of a manageable size but uniquely designed,” says Pat Allabastro, who, with Sue Boyer, co-chairs the event. “There is a courtyard living space, a vision of Italy, a venue for displaying whimsical collectables, and a testing ground for design ideas and plants.”
Founded in 1917, the Garden Club is one of the oldest in Illinois.
“The gardens display the wide range of interests our members have, which keeps the club active and vital. In 2007, our club will be celebrating its 90th year with some promising activities centered around gardens and horticulture,” notes Allabastro.
According to their official statement, the Garden Club was founded to: Promote civic beauty by encouraging home gardens and the horticultural beautification of our villages; Promote horticulture and the study of horticulture and aid in the protection and conservation of our communities’ ecology and natural resources.
Maribeth Stein is the former owner of a now-closed, popular, garden gift store formerly located on Lake Street in Oak Park called “Kate’s Garden.” Her husband, Larry, recently sold his Oak Park-based Molly Maids cleaning service. “If you look at our front garden and our back garden, you see our personalities,” she confesses. “My husband is a computer guy, very organized, very methodical. Me, I can’t keep a sentence together without getting sidetracked with another thought.”
Stein credits her colorful backyard to “serendipidity”whatever we like, we buy and put in the ground.” Her latest addition is a junkus””a twisty, gnarly water plant””resembling a corkscrew that she keeps in containers.
Don’t be fooled by the name of her former store”-Kate’s Garden”into thinking Stein has been an avid gardener for years. “It happened by accident,” she says of the name. “We wanted to open a gift store, and my partner and I noticed there weren’t any gardening things for sale in this area, and we knew gardening is a big trend.” Stein herself didn’t start gardening until 2002. She describes her backyard at the time of the purchase as “wooden stairs, cement sidewalk, and dead grass.”
She and her husband met with JoBeth Halpin of Figg-Halpin Design in Oak Park and planned the garden. “JoBeth had never done a garden before,” she observes, “but it came together.”
It contains plenty of garden art. An old bicycle is a fixture, its basket filled with flowers. “We love whimsy and color,” Stein explains of her zaftig array”color such as the red in the dinner-plate-size hibiscus. And the tropic cannas. “We always plant lots of petunias every year for color,” she adds. “My favorite plant now is a curly willow tree. One year, I had dead curly willow branches as accents and just never cleaned them out over the winter. Then I noticed they were budding, so I stuck them in the ground”and now they are a tree.”
The front yard has been “made over” recently. “It looked like something from Sanford and Sons, Stein says, referring to the popular old comedy show about a junk dealer. “The ladies from the Garden Club came to look at the garden, and I could see them sort of frowning at the front yard,” she recalls. “I ran out and said, ‘No! No! It’s the back!’ and I promised to do something with the front.” She and her husband tempered their whimsy and “actually read the labels” on the plants this time around, adding some research for the front.
Last year, the Steins’ vast collection of garden art was a stimulus for her backyard redesign which included a pergola covered with honeysuckle vines and a dining table. A candle chandelier and mission-style lighting complete the gardenroom as well as aged brick pavers. Hollyhocks and Asiatic lilies and dahlias add color and fragrance. “I had the chandelier with candles for years and was just waiting for the right place to use it,” Stein says of the opulent lighting. “The three cats love the garden ” they like to look out the window and bark at the birds.”
Italian influence
Paola Ribaudo Pickrell describes her garden as “a postage stamp really, the smallest garden on the tour.” She says she began gardening just a few years ago when she and her husband Charles were remodeling their home. “One day in winter, I looked out the window and decided I needed to create something beautiful”we had been living with open wall studs for 18 months, and I had had it.”
She describes her garden as “formal, with box hedges, yews, conifers, lilacs.” Her desire was to create “something that would be green in the winter”I need color.” She describes her garden as “magic and with the frost, it is even more magical.”
A product manager for an architectural “green” firm (“Our company did the Oak Park Main Library green roof”), Ribaudo Pickrell says she gardens for a few hours every morning before work “when it is quiet and I am alone.”
The daughter of an accomplished artist father and a sculptress mother, Ribaudo Pickrell has artistic genes that go back generations, to which she credits her love of roses. “I went through all the phases”grasses, roses”before my current garden. With my grandfather who lived with us, when I was a little girl, I would wake up in the middle of the night, curious to see what exciting things all the adults were doing, and my grandfather was always painting and always included roses.”
Ribaudo Pickrell was born and raised in Italy (“Near Genoa”a climate not as harsh as here”) but moved to Chicago as a child with her family when her father found employment here.
“The weather has been too cool this summer,” she notes. “I’m not complaining, but for many gardens and flowering plants, it has really not shown them at their best,” she observes.
A dozen gardens are included in the 13th annual Oak Park and River Forest Garden Walk. In addition to the two above, here are highlights from the remaining 10:
Like a museum, you’ll visit different “rooms,” including a rock garden and small pond, large bed of annuals that rotates in variety and color each year, an entertainment area with wood burning oven, raised beds for vegetables and herbs as well as an iron-gated formal garden, defined by boxwoods.
This garden warmly greets you and holds your attention from all points of the house; a curved path leading to the house passes islands of plantings and green lawn. Mugo pines, hawthorns, magnolias and many perennials graciously surround the house. The vast back garden features gently curving beds of flowering shrubs, small trees and perennials that surround a large center lawn.
Providing a place for quiet reflection and wedding photography, this garden includes a curved berm, edged by limestone slabs, with a center stone bench. Dwarf Korean lilacs, small trees, red rose bushes and perennials complete this garden.
Several small gardens fill this courtyard, each with its own theme. Spring miniature bulb plants, herbs, watercress, arugula and snap peas are planted under kitchen windows, climbing roses; shade garden of birch tree, crabapple, varieties of lilies, forget-me-nots, lily-of-the-valley, a turtlehead plant, ferns and a variety of annuals, a small sitting area surrounded by flea market works of art; and window boxes reminiscent of those seen on a recent trip to Quebec.
Next-door-neighbor gardens provide lovely viewing from each other’s homes”both share matching curved beds, trellises, grey stones and weathered wood fencing for a gracious communal feel.
A conservatory provides year-round flora and a pergola offers a private retreat. Evergreens including hemlocks, Chamaecyparis, hollies and junipers provide form and texture in this next garden. Red-twig dogwood and lime green twigs of Kerria provide winter interest, as do exfoliating bark of River Birch and Oakleaf Hydrangea.
New curb appeal was created through Wichita Blue Junipers at the foundation of the house and planters. More than 25 varieties of hosta and colorful Chameleon plant make up the ground cover. Grass pathway leads through blue and pink perennials. Rear yard features “Endless Summer” Hydrangea and other shade perennials, as well as forget-me-nots, lungwort, rose turtlehead, snakeroot and climbing plants.
A raised front courtyard was designed to provide a “formal” garden which also serves as a “trap” for the dog; Tiered plant stand above Pachysandra solves the challenge of basement light wells. Due to an unusually-shaped addition, the rear garden solution provides beauty and privacy. Potted hibiscus and clematis vines soften wooden fencing and a brick patio. A two-foot berm is topped with tall grasses, spruce, juniper and lilac.
An Arts-and-Craft-style front garden greet you and a berm divides the rear garden into two, creating a feeling of greater space. The side yard, often an oversight, is completely landscaped. This garden is a testing ground for plant and design ideas”each garden space planted with a different color scheme or bloom time. One corner includes a rain garden, a low area filled with native perennials.