If it’s true, as James Russell Lowell wrote, that there is nothing so rare as a day in June, a great way to spend one would be to gather up some buds and stroll through nine private, plus two public, gardens in Oak Park and River Forest during the 22nd Annual Oak Park & River Forest Garden Walk this Sunday, June 28, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Some of the splendiferous botanical views are DIY, while others are designed and maintained by landscaping pros. All promise to provide opportunities to form a few new favorite plant picks, plus inspire future landscaping approaches, thanks to the organizational efforts of this year’s event co-sponsors, Friends of the Oak Park Conservatory and the Garden Club of Oak Park-River Forest.
Oasis with an urban vibe
Debora Beckett (Klopfenstein) describes her semi-shade garden on the 1200 block of N. Euclid as “a really small space that has become an oasis with an urban vibe.”
Simplicity and illusion are the garden’s benchmarks, she says.
“My [late] husband had a back 40 acres in South Bend. This is our back 40 feet in Illinois,” she said, adding that her hands-on garden design is “doable — one that is done by one woman who does everything herself.”
In the shade of a Japanese Red Maple is an artful array of hardy hostas, which over time the homeowner has divided and grown into what has become a bouquet of patterns, hues, textures and colors.
“I probably started with about 20 hostas at most, and have divided and repositioned them to create an urban garden oasis,” she said.
To stretch the illusion of more room in less space, Beckett said she added 2,000 pounds of enriched soil to the north garden border to give the impression of depth and height.
“I also try to make it look bigger than it is by growing things up,” she added. “The hydrangea, for example, grow up the walls, and I have the evergreens along the side of the house. To some extent, it is monochromatic, in that I do not have the blues and the oranges, but I do have the greens.”
An English cottage garden
Putting on a colorful four-season native flower show across the street from Lincoln Elementary School in Oak Park is the lush and sustainable native and edible gardens of Elizabeth Loudermilk. She calls it “a working English cottage garden” with flowers, plus fruits and vegetables for consumption.
“In an English cottage garden, you don’t have to have a rigid plan; you don’t have to have symmetry; you don’t have a staff of gardeners to maintain it,” she said. “And my garden provides material for two large bouquets for my church each Sunday from May through October — and flowers for friends, which includes the butterflies and bees.”
In the past she has had about 25 oriental poppies in the front garden, which did spread, but tend to fizzle out after their spectacular bloom.
“With the poppies, there would be this ugly dying foliage and a huge space to fill,” she said on a recent walk-through past the current patch of annual poppies, which she reseeds each spring. “Now there are a lot of things in my garden that reseed wildly, things like annual salvia as well as larkspur and cleome and Bells of Ireland. I have also reduced the number of poppies somewhat and experimented with a variety of plants, such as dahlias, which will [eventually] grow up to cover the bare spots when I cut down the poppy foliage.”
In her garden, the pretty alliums are showstoppers, even past their season of bloom.
“I started out with only some Allium Crystal Free, and I now have about 120 of them, and they are proliferating all over the place. I keep giving them to people, and they just keep coming, and I just love them,” she said.
Home on his prairie
Oak Park gardener Davis Farnham’s family moved to the 200 block of South Euclid in 1997. The stately home came with a traditional Oak Park backyard — two lots that were split into three back in 1893.
Because the yard was a little smaller than some of the lots around them, and since the garden was in disrepair when they moved in, Farnham started a new garden from scratch.
His first foray involved no-fuss cultivation of Illinois native prairie plants.
“I became interested in prairie plants and native grasses from visiting with ‘Art and Linda’ at the Oak Park Farmers Market. So we purchased many plants from them, and I also have native plants from my mother’s garden,” he said, noting that the beauty of growing natives is that “they’re very reliable, and you do not have to water them a bunch.”
But what began as patches of Illinois prairie plants has evolved into a collection of those plants, plus some interesting perennial and tropical plants that he enjoys growing. So mixed in with the purple coneflowers, cup plants, prairie meadow rue, and Miscanthus sinensis ‘Silberfeder’ prairie grass are fun-to-grow monkey wax bells, plus several varieties of hydrangeas and lupines.
“At first I was doing all prairie plants, but after a while I realized that I like to have other types of things in my garden, too,” Farnham said. “It is different, and not a classic approach, but we like it.”
Two bonus stops will be the River Forest Public Library’s Anne Smedinghoff Memorial Garden, 735 Lathrop Ave. in River Forest, and Oak Park Art League’s Sculpture Garden at 720 Chicago Ave. in Oak Park. And, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Cheney Mansion, 220 N. Euclid in Oak Park, attendees are encouraged to eat a picnic-style lunch, accompanied by music performed by student musicians from Oak Park and River Forest High School.
Tickets cost $15 in advance; $20 on the day of the event, and children under 12 are free. For additional information, call 708-725-2400, or visit either fopcon.org, or gcoprf.org.