The West Chicago Garden Club

Our March speaker, naturalist David Brooks of Spring Valley Nature Center in Schaumburg, will be presenting “Foraging for Wild Edibles.” Foraging for wild edible plants requires knowledge and skill possessed by our ancestors but lost to most of us. This introduction will show you how, when and where to gather a variety of highly nutritious and delicious wild plants as well as provide recipes and other preparation tips. Suggestions and resources for improving your wild plant identification skills will also be available.

We are planning to hold the March meeting in person as usual this month. If there are changes due to the ongoing pandemic, we will notify members via email and calling-post. Masks are now optional and we will be having refreshments before the meeting.

Meeting Location: St Andrew Lutheran Church NE Corner of Prince Crossing & Geneva Road.

Meeting Time: 6:45PM Refreshments – 7:00PM Business Meeting – 7:15PM Program

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!