The secrets of seven outstanding gardeners were shared with guests who wandered through their gardens on the 13th annual Southland Community Garden Walk on Sunday, July 13, hosted by the National Council of Jewish Women.
Each, in its own way, was a perfect example of how variety, color and design bring a garden to life.
One of the most interesting spots was a serenity space that seemed to block out the noise from a four-lane road directly behind it. Homeowner Diane DuBois of Glenwood had a flower garden near the parkway of her home. That stretched to a row of balloon flowers and other perennials along the side of her house.
But behind her garage is her private oasis, something akin to an Asian-inspired surround. DuBois, a retired art teacher at Thornwood High School, asked a former student, Jason Verbeek, to design a fountain for her. One of his sculptures is part of the Flossmoor Art Commission’s collection.
Nancy Burrows created this front garden three years ago. (Marilyn Thomas/H-F Chronicle)
A swinging bench allows DuBois to relax and look directly to her ornamental space featuring a 54-inch stone within a red Japanese-influenced frame. A relaxing Buddha sits in front. DuBois calls it “my place to be quiet.”
When Marcie and Don Hollandsworth moved to their Flossmoor home in 1986, they had a small wooden deck and a fountain sitting in a round pool. The garden had big trees; several have since come down. The couple hired Water’s Edge to help them redesign the space.
The fountain was moved to a different area of the yard, and now in its place is a small waterfall with a deep pool with koi fish. Water’s Edge also added a fireplace. In front of a gazebo is Marcie’s vegetable garden set in raised beds.
The yard is deep enough that the couple has flower beds behind the waterfall, but Marcie says her favorite morning spot is her front porch where she can sit and look out on her front yard garden.
Their neighbor, Irvin Anthony, loves gardening, but his passion is his vegetable garden. He and his wife, Rhonda, moved to their Flossmoor home in part because it had a big yard that already had a flower bed, but Anthony remembers “it was wild. There was stuff all over the place.” He moved the grasses to create a border along his back fence. Then he thinned out the flowers, laid stones for a garden border and went to work plotting his vegetables.
This year’s crop is broccoli, cauliflower, thyme, leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, cabbage, bell peppers, pumpkin squash, yellow squash, collard greens, tomatoes, and eggplant. The Anthonys share their bounty with their neighbors.
In The Greens neighborhood of Olympia Fields, Darryl Johnson had pictures of his yard 20 years ago when it was pretty barren. He spruced up the front yard with hydrangea, roses and Japanese maples.
It’s the back where Johnson has spent his time designing his perfect oasis. He built a pergola and fireplace at the back of the house. He brought in crews to take down several old trees, remove buckthorn and level some of the yard. It’s still a shade yard, so Johnson created a palette of greens with 20 varieties of hosta.
“It’s a lot of trial and error. If you like gardening you know you’re never, ever done. You see what worked and what didn’t work so you can plan for next year,” Johnson said.
Nancy and Larry Burrows didn’t set out to be gardeners when they moved to their Flossmoor home, but over the last 40 years they’ve replaced the old shrubs and earthen clay with black dirt fortified from Larry’s composting heaps. Their yards – front and back – have a variety of colorful flower beds decorated with Nancy’s artful creations.
They got grape vine from a Michigan winery. Larry uses the grapes for jelly “when the critters don’t get it.” During COVID, they took an online class to learn to create raised beds. They turned a corner of their yard into eight raised vegetable beds.
Larry has more than 20 rain barrels scattered around the yard. He uses a submersible pump to keep the water flowing.
Trish Harper has a corner lot in Flossmoor and has planted flowers along the parkway. For a time, that was her only garden because huge trees crowded out sunlight around the house. Then two maples, two elms and an ash were taken down and Trish found she needed to read up on flowers for a sunny garden.
In the 25 years she and her husband have been at their address they updated the property’s fence, improved the patio at her back door to eliminate a drainage issue, and decided to improve on a pea gravel patio where one of those massive trees had been. Gardening is enjoyable for Harper.
“I don’t like lawns, and I don’t use herbicides,” she said.
Scott Mehaffey and Carlos Quezeda-Gomez bought their Flossmoor arts and crafts style house 12 years ago not realizing their back yard would have its own lake after every rain. Taking care of that issue took some doing, digging four-feet deep and filling it with broken concrete and landscape fabric to fill. Today it’s a pleasant seating area.
Mehaffey said working in the yard they discovered what was buried there, including quarry stone and the old blue stone laundry sink that had been dragged out from their 1904 house. They broke that up and used it as steps leading from the house to the garden. Mehaffey plotted front and back gardens with a variety of flowers and has hosta lining the south edge of their property.
