The West Chicago Garden Club

Our 20th Annual West Chicago Garden Club Plant Sale will be on Saturday, May 18th from 8:00 AM – 2:00 PM.  It will be at the heart of the West Chicago Blooming Fest in Downtown West Chicago.

Most of our plants come from our members’ gardens or are raised in their greenhouses.  You will find Natives, Annuals, Perennials, Vegetables, Herbs, and even some small shrubs and trees.

The sale will be held Rain or Shine! Arrive early for the best selection.  A PDF version of our poster is available.

Our April speaker is Ed Max. Ed Max is a WCGC member and avid organic gardener as well. Ed is also a certified arborist and naturalist and by occupation is a landscape designer- owning and operating Max’s Greener Places, here in the West Chicago / Winfield area. His blog of horticultural
musings can be seen on at his web-site www.Maxlandscape.com.

Ed is passionate about native floral and fauna, and utilizes native species in his design work ,as well volunteering in natural areas on habitat restorations. He advocates for more use of native species- as the populations of both native insects and native flora they depend upon are in dangerous decline.

Ed also leads hikes with Sierra club, and is active with the Ill Native Plant Society.  His talk will be on native wildflowers, and spring colors in the Chicagoland garden and woodlands, including ‘Spring Ephemerals’.  Many of the photos are from his own shade gardens here in West Chicago.

By Tom Fessler

Well it’s Spring Time in Illinois again, yesterday was in the mid 70’s and today there is a trace of snow or sleet in the air. Things at the Kruse House are getting off to a great start, with the annual Spring clean-up. I stopped at the house on clean up day, the crew were at lunch but I could see the work they were doing. It is amazing how much debris piles up here during the Winter months. And not just leaves and sticks. There is a lot of paper, cans, bottles, plastic and for whatever reason a lot of apparently loosing lottery tickets. It seems like people from miles around come to the Kruse just to throw their old lottery tickets away.

I think this was a bad Winter for the trees in this area. As I walked around my own house as well as the Kruse House I saw large amounts of small and medium size sticks and branches. In my yard alone I picked up almost a yard bag and a half of them.

The next time you drive by the Kruse House you will notice it has a different look. One of the large tree in the very front has been removed. I am not sure why it was removed. Now that the tree is gone, along with the shade it provided, the plants placed there may have to be moved as now they are in direct sunlight. It’s kind of amazing how we don’t pay attention to trees until they are gone.

If you get a chance to stop by the Kruse House you will notice that there are many plants already up and some are even blooming. So have a great Spring.

Photos taken at Kruse Garden by Kerry Perry