Rose by Nick Knight

A client has asked us to design and install a cutting garden in their backyard. This is very exciting and something we’ve been interested in incorporating into a landscape design. Even though our gardens always include plenty of perennials and annuals which can provide beautiful flowers for arrangements, having a dedicated area just for creatively useful flowers and vegetables is a lovely feature.

It's also a great opportunity to explore the craft of flower arranging!

Flower Decorator Constance Spry

As with most forms of arts and crafts, the degree of skill and mastery of floral arrangement varies from the casual hobbyist to the legendary artists. This, together with the natural beauty of even a single bloom, makes the genre interesting. You don’t have to be a professional to stroll into your yard and snip some ephemeral decor for your home.

According to a New York Times Home and Garden article, fresh flower arranging is trendy today with young homeowners and part of a growing interest in all things handmade.

Classes are being offered all over the country with an emphasis on the free-form aesthetic sometimes with the use of wild flowers. In Britain, even weeds don't get overlooked when it comes to flower arranging. Vogue did a post on England's New Floral Revolution.

We love cutting flowers for the house but as garden designers don’t usually have much spare time in the spring and summer to fiddle around. This does not matter because many flower varieties from native perennials to flowering shrubs are fair game and make perfect quick pieces to throw in a container.

A few of our favorites include Echinops (pictured above top) which makes a wonderful textural contrast with other flowers, Phlox 'David' (above center) and Lily Stargazer (above bottom).

The image at the beginning of this post is by legendary photographer Nick Knight. It was part of a recent exhibition at SHOWstudio.com called Florist. The theme set out to show just how powerful the natural grace of a simple flower can be.

We plan more posts on cutting flowers from the garden as they come into bloom this year. In the meantime we are looking for talented florists in our local area we could include in this journal. Do you know of any? If so please leave us a comment so we can possibly include them in a future post.

It has taken us a little longer to prepare this post because we've been exploring the Western Suburbs of Chicago from outer space and the beginning of time. It's heavy stuff, and that was just learning to use the Google Earth! We are happy to say though, we've really got our geek groove on and have set up what we feel will make a nice ongoing piece. This doesn't mean we've given up modern times and people. In fact, we are working on posts about some fabulous local folks for the near future. But for now, let's go back 11,500 years to when the Chicagoland prairies first formed.

Click our Google Earth image above to see it larger

Northern Illinois is known for its harsh environment and this has been going on for a very long time. The entire region was covered by at least 4 glaciers with the Wisconsinan being the last to occur between fifty and fifteen thousand years ago. As it melted back it formed what is known as Lake Chicago which extended from the current lake front to about 2 miles west of where the Des Plaines river now runs. Everything from the City to much of suburban Cook County was once under water, including the villages of River Forest, Oak Park and Riverside. According to our map, LaGrange probably was prime lake front property!

Illinois native grass big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) in foreground.

Glaciers provided a way for the original native American settlers to reach this land, gave us our familiar flat landscape, great lakes and much more local natural history. We've taken a look and compiled pictures of the Illinois native plants past and present.

Download Pottering Around the Western Suburbs of Chicago.kmz (98.2K)

Use the link above to visit our new local exploration on Google Earth. We will continue to add more information and images to the place.

Prairie and savanna were not the original northern Illinois landscape. As the glaciers retreated, vegetation moved into the new ice-free zone. Because temperatures were still colder, species more common in Canada such as white spruce (Picea glauca), black spruce (Picea mariana) and larch (Larix laricina) dominated for about 1,000 years.

As the climate began to warm, deciduous trees began to appear. Among the varieties were ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana) pictured above top, balsam fir (Abies balsamea) shown above bottom and black ash (Fraxinus nigra). This forest mix that occured is unusual and not found anywhere today.

Around 13,000 years ago the climate is thought to have cooled again and trees such as the alder (Alnus) shown above bottom, were common. Then about 12,000 years ago apparently things really began to heat up. The conifers, spruce and fir began to disappear and black ash, oak and elm (Ulmus) prevailed. Walnut (Juglans) shown above top, Sugar Maple pictured above middle and hickory were also abundant.

9,000 to 6,000 years ago the region went through periods of wet and dry weather (sound familiar). Eventually it became predominately drier and what could be considered a more modern landscape began to form. Grasses such as big bluestem, indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) above top, prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) above middle, prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) above bottom, rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccifolium) and prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) wove a tapastry accoss the vast spaces.

As can be seen on our Google Earth image, tall grass prairies covered most of the area from Chicago to the Western Suburbs. Hinsdale and Burr Ridge sat in the middle of a what the early explorers described as a vast natural colorful flower garden as far as the eye could see. However, with hot summers and dry grasses came prairie fires.

Burning fields were also witnessed with amazement by the early European settlers. Scientist don't seem to agree if the fires occurred naturally by lightning strikes or if set deliberately by the native Americans. The theory is the Indians would set the fires to clear the area to make it easier for walking and hunting as well as for spotting incoming invaders like Europeans!

Whether ignited naturally or as a quick and efficient landscaping maintenance technique, the fires left their mark on the terrain. Many of the earlier more flammable varieties were completely wiped out while the trees such as mighty black oak (Quercus velutina) shown above, could better withstand the surrounding fires to assure their permanent place in the landscape. Also on our Google Earth image you can see how there were strips of forested land that survived along the major bodies of water such as Lake Michigan shore and mainly the east sides of the rivers because the fires would spread from the west and be stopped by the rivers.

Along the sandy edge of Lake Michigan, different plant varieties thrived. Pictures of some of them can be seen along with more prairie plants on a flickr gallery we created. We thank all the photographers whose images we chose to share above. You can see more of each person's work on flickr by clicking on any of the photos above.

As landscape designers we look forward to continuing our exploration of our local landscape and the people and places that continue to create it. If you have any information we chould share, please let us know. We would love to hear from you.

Sporting feature show garden

The 2011 Chicago Flower & Garden Show is now on. As designers, we always look forward to the event because not only is it a chance to see lovely landscaping displays and ideas, it’s also a sure harbinger of spring. There is one thing however that always disappoints us about the indoor flower show, which is how difficult it is to photograph the designs in a way that really does them justice! We like to think we are okay photographers but haven’t quite figured out the art of shooting the show. So this probably means the only way to take in the design work and features in their full glory is to go see them all in person!

This year’s theme is The Sport of Gardening and we have a quick peek at some of what you'll find that make this event a great day out.

One of the main feature gardens is pictured above. It's a large, creative and fun tribute to the Chicago Blackhawks complete with an ice rink water feature that visitors can walk through. There are several displays that pay tribute to professional sports teams while others showcase more leisurely outdoor alfresco activities such as golf, kid's play and the grueling sports of barbecue and lifting a few cold beers!

Tablescape makes an appearance again this year and display creative approaches to table settings and flower arrangement for outdoor dining and entertaining.

We are glad to see Smith & Hawken is back with a new garden range sold exclusively at Target. This longtime favorite English brand includes attractive and affordable teak outdoor furniture, ceramic and metal planting containers, as well as other stylish landscape garden decor and high quality gardening tools.

Other exhibitors in the flower show Marketplace include Aquascape water features, brick paving manufacturers Belgard and Unilock, Lurvey Landscape Supply and Garden Center and Rich's Foxwillow Pines Nursery.