The West Chicago Garden Club

We have been away from NFK for several months. We have enjoyed the time off but it’s time to start talking about our favorite garden again.

I’m sure the winter season holds commonality for all dyed-in-the-wool gardeners.  First we take a break.  Leave it alone for a while.  But soon enough we need a hort fix.  It’s those great garden magazines and fabulous garden books you got for Christmas that stir the blood and those ‘new’ hybrids start looking very interesting.  Even though your head says ‘tried and true’ plants make the most sense the intrigue is undeniable. However, when it comes to the Kruse Garden, we are nothing but practical with our plants.  Our backs, our time, and our budget all offer constraints.  So ‘known’ wins over ‘unknown’ every time.

The east fence border is an area of the garden that will need attention this year.  You may recall mention of a big weed mess down there much of last year but we redeemed ourselves with a fall clearing.  The challenge this year will be keeping the weeds down.  Landscape cloth, mulch, and Roundup should help accomplish that goal.  But whenever you visit the gardens this year, be sure to evaluate our progress.

We hope to be first on the list for the Votavas Lawn Care clean up crew this year as we were last year.  This will be our third year using this service.  We couldn’t do the spring clean-up without their help!  A minimum of two truckloads of yard waste gets hauled out of the garden.  All year we use the compost pile for debris but we stain the capacity of this location and could never handle all the spring debris being dumped on the pile.

Did you hear?  The Kruse garden and house tours were named in Wayne Garden Club’s top three programs from last year.  Every GC in District ll shares their favorite past programs at the District’s Program Meeting in January.  June Luther and Pauline Briggs, our representatives, were excited and proud to bring back that welcome news!  We hope to share the garden with as many visitors as possible this year.  To that end, we are planning to hold our June Club Meeting in the garden and invite other garden clubs to join us.  We are in the early planning stage so if you have any input we would love to hear from you.

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