| We now can offer garden and landscape design to our clients.
Below are some pictures of a garden we did here in Oak Park last
year. We
are working with several local landscapers to detail and implement the
designs that we can generate. Due to this, we are only able to work
locally at this point, but I foresee in the future a time when we could
generate a detailed plan for an out-of-town client and then hand it off to
someone in their area to implement. If you have a garden project
that you would like to discuss, please feel free to call or email me.
Click here to see our line
of Prairie Style garden planters. |
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| These are shots of a garden I
did for some clients in Oak Park. I had previously assisted with the
design of a mudroom and kitchen addition, which you can see in the first
photo on the right of the picture. The deck also needed to be
redesigned, and so I came up with a solution that tied it all together in
terms of look and materials. Everything to the right of the windows
on the first floor on the left is new construction. Where we could,
we reused original windows from the demolition (the contractor was not
happy about this!) Snowball hydrangeas, which grow phenomenally in
Oak Park, are planted at the base of the terrace. The picture on the
right was taken standing at the back door, and shows the view down a
gently slope towards the garage (new) and a Secret Garden I created in
that awkward space next to it. Box outlines two beds on either side
of the garage window, and an antique planter from Pennsylvania has an
ostrich fern in it. Boston ivy climbs up the wall behind creating a
beautiful composition of greens all season long, with the ivy turning
scarlet in the fall and the fern dying to a wonderful soft tan. |
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| This is a closer view of the
entrance to the Secret Garden. Climbing roses and sweet autumn
clematis cover the lattice and arbor in season. The tree on the
right is a redbud, which also do well in Oak Park, with hosta, sweet
william and Japanese painted fern planted at its feet. I love the
dusty gray of the fern with the chartreuse color of the hosta. The
middle picture is of one corner of the Secret Garden, in which I used many
plants that you could find in an English cottage garden, but here
contained and played against the fairly rigid geometry of the bricks and
beds. Lady's Mantle, woodruff, roses, lilies, woodbine, lavender,
sage, ivies, lace cap hydrangeas, coral bells and irises, along with more
clematis that twine up into the ivy and woodbine and through the roses
make this a wonderfully crowded, beautiful and fragrant garden. The
picture on the far right shows an antique sundial with sage planted at its
feet and backed by Hicks yews. All summer and fall this bed is alive
with bumblebees. |
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| The picture on the left shows a
corner of the terrace, where a wonderful box elder is growing at a very Japanese
slant. Another antique planter is filled with annuals on a seasonal
basis, with hydrangea anchoring one side of a small shade composition that
includes several different kinds of hosta, coral bells and a variegated
leaf perennial that I forget the name of. I have tried to get
foxglove to grow here, which I think would be perfect, but the house sits
on the edge of the ancient shoreline of Lake Michigan, so while the soil
at the bottom of the garden is heavy with clay, this spot is sandy, and I
guess foxgloves don't like that. The picture in the middle shows the
hydrangea in bloom, with a beautiful, deep purple clematis climbing up and
through it. I thought when I bought it that it was a Jackmanii, but
I have been told not by enough people that I am beginning to believe
them. Whatever it is, it works. The shot on the end shows the
planter with the annual fern in mid summer. I love the contrast of
greens and leaf shapes among the fern, Boston ivy and English ivy.
No matter what the actual temperature, this group always looks cool and
fresh. |
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