The West Chicago Garden Club

By Christina Covarrubias 

West Chicago Garden Club gardeners returned to the garden at the Kruse House museum property just last week and will meet every Wednesday from 9-11am weather permitting.

Gardening began just in time to inhale all the beauty of spring. Literally, at every turn in the garden there is a bright spot of color from the flowering barrenwort along the sidewalk, tulips dotting the landscape, Virginia bluebells, pink and purple lungwort, hot pink pigsqueak, a showstopper of a magnolia tree to blankets of violet-hued grape hyacinths that are children, grandchildren and great grandchild (probably) of the original ones planted by the Kruse family. A picture will not do it justice to represent how lovely the garden is in spring.

Ephemeral bulbs are not the only thing of interest in the garden. There are several unique species of trees including ginkgo, dogwood, London planetree, an original pear tree, and even a once-thought-extinct Dawn Redwood.

Just a note, from the Metasequoia genus native to China, a forester rediscovered Dawn Redwoods in one single Chinese region during the 1940’s. This led to seed collection and distribution around the world. The deciduous Dawn Redwood species sets itself apart from the other two redwoods species (Great Sequoia and Coast Redwood) by changing color to a rusty orange in the fall and then dropping its leaves. Such a treasure to have in this garden!

If you find yourself driving down Main Street at any time you should pull in the driveway and take a short (or long!) stroll around the garden.

A Hint of the Master: Jens Jensen and the Kruse House Garden
By Keith Letsche

Jens Jensen seated in one of his council rings

You may have wondered where the ideas for the distinctive rock terraces and pond came from that you see in the Kruse House Garden. The source of these is likely the master landscape architect Jens Jensen (1860-1951). Born in Denmark, Jensen emigrated to Chicago in 1884, where he took employment with the city’s West Park Commission, working his way up from laborer to general superintendent of the West Park system. During this time, he designed or redesigned the system’s major parks like Humbolt, Garfield, and Douglass Parks, and his masterpiece, Columbus Park. In 1920, he started his own landscape architectural practice, creating gardens for prominent client’ s like Henry Ford and Ford’s son Edsel.

Jensen used natural features of the Midwestern landscape as themes for his designs. Terraced tiers of rocks were intended to invoke the rocky outcroppings of the Midwest’s post-glacial landscape.  Often the focal point of his rocked terraces was a small grotto that featured a pond or a “council ring,” a circular arrangement of rocks for sitting. At the height of his influence in the 1920s and 1930s, his designs inspired much imitation, and the large size and natural contours of the Kruse House lot provided a perfect opportunity for the Kruses to realize what then a very contemporary garden design based on Jensen’s ideas. Compare the Kruse House lily pond below with the one next to it that Jensen designed for Henry Ford’s Fair Lane estate in Gross Point, Michigan.

Kruse House Lily Pond

Grotto pond at Fair Lane, Henry Ford’s estate in Grosse Point. Michigan

By Barbara Darrah

January was a long dark month this year. There wasn’t even enough sunlight to cause the snow to glisten. For the first time, our solar panels generated no electricity, and the extended subzero temperatures  knocked out the heat in our greenhouse. So, it was with excitement and delight one early February morning that I discovered the dancing yellow petals of the winter aconites in our front yard. Nothing beats these early reminders of spring as winter slowly begins to fade away.

Thus it was that I decided to make a journey to the Kruse garden to see the place where I first encountered these gentle reminders of spring’s renewal. Much to my disappointment, I couldn’t find any sign of them there. Don’t get me wrong; the garden still had the quiet beauty of winter’s simplicity. The unique shapes of the trees and the bushes stood out and the little frog prince by the pond gazed longingly for just a murmur of green.

At this time of year, we can feel winter’s dull and gray grasp beginning to weaken. There is a bit more sun, a few hints of green and the hidden secrets of new life shyly begin to appear. The lethargy that comes from winter’s darkness starts to lessen and new projects come to mind. I expect that the aconites will come back at Kruse, perhaps even a snowdrop or two, and in my mind the garden will begin to grow again.