The West Chicago Garden Club

I know you read this on page one but it bears repeating… the June 27^th general monthly meeting of the Garden Club will be held at the Kruse Garden. Arrive a little early to allow time to stroll around and get a good look at the gardens. Don’t miss this opportunity to gather in a lovely garden.  If the weather won’t cooperate we will have to go to our usual meeting place at the church.  Boo hoo if that happens!

One thing you want to check out is the stone wall behind the pond.  Pam Lurz and her husband Greg did a superb job of rebuilding it! As you can see they are hard at work on the left and right shows wall half done.  It went from a messy pile of rocks to a handsome stacked wall with about 12hours of their skilled labor. Pam says “We started building stone walls in our own yard because it has lots of small flagstones buried in the soil. I’ve always joked that we could build a quarry in our back yard. In one area it’s almost 50% rock. After a while we started using the rocks to edge the grass and then started building low stone walls.”  We are very grateful for their work! Thank you Pam & Greg!

The honeysuckle vine by the shed door is a handsome sight and the iris right next to it was stunning!  See you in the garden.

It must be a little bit sinful to spend an inordinate amount of time admiring ones’ work—and being so very pleased  . . . the  hyacinths, the old tulips, the blooming pear trees—red buds and lilacs—spring has come to the Kruse garden.

The work in the garden started in early April with the major spring clean-up.  We were very happy that Pam and June came to help.  With the five of us and the landscaping crew, we had the property shaped up by noon.  Since leaves aren’t raked in the fall but just blown to the sides, the clean-up generated two and a half truck loads of debris.  We removed a dried evergreen tree and had a ginkgo tree planted.  Many thanks to Chuck and Shirley Schramer for the donation of the tree.  The leaves will glow like golden coins in the fall. Continue Reading »

Spring was slow to arrive to the Kruse garden.  So rather than talk of what may be sprouting in the garden let’s look forward and ask some questions.  In August are the sedums flopping in your garden?  Are the groundcovers messy and weed infested?  Are the summer perennials falling and leaning into each other?  Are you so discouraged that you hope for an early frost?  If so we want to share some experimentation we have done at the Kruse garden in pruning, shearing, cutting back for height, longer bloom, and flop prevention.   It is a garden that has to look reasonably nice with a minimum of care.

We can start with a book.  The “Well-Tended Perennial Garden” by Tracy DiSabato-Aust, 1998, is very useful.  It provides a guide as in “should we or shouldn’t we” shear, prune, or cut.  Her motto is “Shear Without Fear”.  It gives impetus.

To start, a lawn mower or string trimmer is wonderful for cutting spent flowers of Ajuga, trimming periwinkle, ivy, winter creeper groundcovers.  It could be done any time in the growing season when the groundcovers are too tall or too weedy. Continue Reading »