The West Chicago Garden Club

By Dee Soustek

I’m new to Kruse and I’m so happy to be part of the crew!  I love gardening and it’s more fun doing it with fellow gardeners.  At home I garden in a small space, so it’s different and fun to garden in a large space, learning about new plants and sharing ideas and muscle.  Gardening in a new space helps expand my gardening knowledge and I look forward to a full season at Kruse. 

You can join the fun at Kruse, we garden on Wednesday’s at 9:00am, contact Billie for more information. Please consider volunteering, more hands make the work quick and more enjoyable. 

I went over to Kruse to look around and to see if Spring had sprung. I was a little surprised to notice a raccoon ??? had beat me to the punch. Look at the size of those paws!  I took a stroll thru the garden on Friday, March 4th, being new to Kruse I didn’t know where to look for the daffodils, aconite, and tulips that I know are there. So I looked around and most of the garden is still dormant but spotted bulbs poking up and some perennials and woodies starting to bud.  I did notice the hellebores that we transplanted on a hot day in August seemed to have made it thru the winter! That was a nice surprise.

Happy Spring!

By Billie Childress

Our fabulous, famous, Garden Club Plant Sale is right around the corner! And… what makes our Plant Sale fabulous and famous is the plants that we dig out of our gardens. Plants from our gardens don’t need to sleep the first year, creep the second, and leap the third like a perennial plant from a nursery. No…sir….eeee! Our plants slow down a bit because it is traumatic to be transplanted but a fully developed root system, even one damaged by division, helps the plant reestablish quickly in its new place.

My garden is filled with Plant Sale plants and that’s the best testimonial there is, that indeed, our plant sale is famous and fabulous. I have purple coneflower, astilbe, epimedium, sensitive fern, monarda, and rudbeckia , just to name a few thriving in my garden, that came from our plant sale. And I hope many of you have a pagoda dogwood, a Mary Todd day lily, a Parkys Gold Hosta, or some other Plant from my garden thriving in your garden.

Kruse Garden in Summer

So what does that have to do with the Kruse Garden???

Well, let me explain.

I’m pondering what plants the Kruse Garden could contribute to the sale! I’m willing to bet that all our gardens have something. It’s just a matter of giving it some thought and of course digging it up in April to be potted at one of our potting parties. In general, the Kruse Garden still needs plants, so why/what would we give away?! Some plants like  Nepeta are generous self seeders and we could spare some of those and our Cyprus spurge needs to be thinned out.

And there you have it! Some plants for the sale! It’s likely there’s another plant or two that we’ll think of to
donate. It is interesting and exciting as the donation bags are opened at the potting parties! It’s amazing what a variety of great plants members generously donate from their gardens!

Shhh . . . Plants Sleeping! – by Keith Letsche
The Kruse Garden in January: anything going on here?
Ever wondered what the plants in your garden are doing in the dead of winter? We know that of some of them—the annuals like petunias, lobelia, alyssum, marigolds and others bought at nurseries and greenhouses each spring or  summer—are dead and gone and in the process of total decay. Others, like larkspur, which “come back” the following year, have in fact also died, but have reseeded themselves so that they look like they return in the spring.

But what about the true perennials—the daffodils, lilies, cone flower, and phlox? What do they do in the winter? Well, not much above ground, as is apparent from the withered and decaying stems and leaves. But the underground portions do not die but continue to live, and even to grow in some cases. This period in the perennial cycle is called “dormancy.” Its purpose is to protect the plant and conserve energy for regrowth in the spring.

Dormancy is triggered by the shorter amounts of daylight and cooling temperatures in the course of the fall. Cooling temperatures reduce the rate of a plant’s metabolism thus stymieing growth. Fluids are withdrawn from leaves, stems, and other above ground parts at the end of the growing season, so that the nutrients in the fluids are not lost but diverted to the roots, bulbs, tubers, or rhizomes to sustain them during winter. Come spring, the cycle is reversed by longer days and warming temperatures. And as everyone knows who has gotten behind in their springtime gardening, plants \really do jump up out of bed! 

So, if you happen to go out in your garden this winter, remember, tip toe softly. Plants are sleeping!