Planting great grounds
The art and craft of a pretty patch of land
In every Chicago neighborhood you’ll find a bungalow calling: “Help! The evergreens are swallowing me whole!”
Yews are the usual suspects, with their thick, gnarled trunks that are plain to see through thinning needles. Other times the culprit is an arbor vitae that has shot up taller than the owner ever dreamed. Or sometimes a horizontal juniper forgets its humble stature, and reaches for exalted heights.
Yews are the usual suspects, with their thick, gnarled trunks that are plain to see through thinning needles. Other times the culprit is an arbor vitae that has shot up taller than the owner ever dreamed. Or sometimes a horizontal juniper forgets its humble stature, and reaches for exalted heights.
Low, gray winter clouds hover for months in Chicago’s Zone 5 climate, and evergreens or non-deciduous shrubs are often a day’s only bright spot. Patient of neglect, they soldier onward and upward, obscuring the bungalow’s beautiful stone detailing, charming brickwork and basement windows. Finally it’s time to do something drastic.
Low, gray winter clouds hover for months in Chicago’s Zone 5 climate, and evergreens or non-deciduous shrubs are often a day’s only bright spot. Patient of neglect, they soldier onward and upward, obscuring the bungalow’s beautiful stone detailing, charming brickwork and basement windows. Finally it’s time to do something drastic.
When that time comes, take your cue from the straightforward use of honest, natural materials in the Arts and Crafts movement, which inspired the bungalow style. Why not add native plants to your landscape?
Native prairie plants are tough. They have evolved to withstand local climate, insects and diseases, are often drought tolerant, and easy to care for. But most are slow to emerge in the spring, when Chicagoans are desperate for a cheery flower to interrupt the damp.
What’s a homeowner to do?
“Homeowners want to maximize [their landscape’s] color and interest,” said John Mast, landscape designer at Sid’s Landscaping in Palos Hills, “but they are dealing with a small area” which makes it a challenge to plant a good number of varieties for a succession of blooms throughout the season.
But it’s a challenge Mast is up to. And he’s applied his knowledge here to getting the scale right for the octagonal Chicago bungalow.
His selection means blossoms will burst from the bare branches of the ornamental redbud tree in the spring. More flowers appear throughout the summer and well into autumn, and the plan always returns an interesting variety of foliage colors and textures.
The evergreen Korean boxwoods, while not native, are much better behaved than yews, and will provide winter interest when skies are, once again, gray.
Patrick Murphy of Gethsemene Garden Center provides an interesting and lovely take on going native for a corner bungalow. He looks for inspiration to the original owners of the 1920s who often would landscape their bungalows by riding out to the nearby prairies or woods, dig up what they needed, then turn around and plant it.