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A visit to the yin-yang garden of Judy Kloese
(c) 2010 Nina A. Koziol of http://www.thisgardencooks.com/
Photos (c) 2010 http://www.shirleyremes.com/
Plant Collector. Master Gardener. Native Plant Enthusiast. Composer. Transformer. These are just a few of the labels that Judy Kloese wears. In the 34 years since she and her husband Lee moved to Batavia, she has developed an exquisite garden that began as a blank slate around their new home. The only hint that this sprawling 1 2/3-acre garden was once farmland is the old milk house that sits behind the pumpkin patch.
“My grandfather had said ‘if it doesn’t provide fruit, don’t plant it’ so I started with an orchard,” Kloese said. Although the apple, cherry and apricot trees she planted in the 1970’s have slowly declined or died, she has added hundreds of new trees and shrubs, many, such as bur oak and red bud, that she started from seed or grew from seedlings. Two bur oaks and a scarlet oak are now more than 25 feet tall and the arborvitae seedlings, planted as an English-style evergreen privacy hedge tower over a border of perennials.
“The kids were young and trees take little care,” Kloese says. “It was a learning experience. As soon as I got a house, I discovered these latent botanical tendencies.” By the 1990s, with her three children grown, Kloese, a pre-school teacher, had time to pursue a Master Gardener’s certificate, take additional gardening classes and for 12 years, she’s worked at Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles.
“This is a learning process—every year we make the beds bigger,” she says. The bucolic setting is filled with English bluebells, snowdrop and allium in spring to coneflowers and prairie grasses in summer. Her tree collecting has produced a Korean maple with great fall color—“a tough tree as an alternative to the tender Japanese maples,” she says—to Carolina silverbell, striped-bark maple, dogwoods, hickories, sweet gum, katsura and tulip tree. Although she begins designing the gardens in her minds’ eye, she eventually puts the designs on paper.
In some ways, she has designed a yin-yang garden, where formal meets informal and native prairie plants rub stems with cultivated perennials. The fine-textured fountain-like leaves of prairie dropseed provide a sweeping edge to a flower border that includes Joe Pye weed, prairie dropseed, ‘Blue Heaven’ bluestem grass, helenium, prairie smoke and amsonia. Elsewhere, tightly pruned boxwood is used for the same effect as an entry way to another garden room flanked by two European beech trees.
Ponderosa pines, Swiss stone pines and white pines—started from seed in a cone—provide color and texture in winter. Striped-bark maple is growing under an ash tree that will be replaced.
She and her husband cut the grass together with two small mowers but the lawn is slowly shrinking to make way for more plants. “We do it for exercise twice a week,” she says.
“What I particularly appreciate about Judy Kloese’s garden is her love of trees, says garden coach Shirley Remes (http://www.shirleyremes.com/) of South Elgin. “She plants trees every year with an emphasis on natives.”
Last year, Kloese was one of 18 candidates from across the state who received a certification in perennials from the Illinois Certified Nursery Professional program. “She is a plant collector extraordinaire,” says co-worker Kevin McGowen of Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles . “She has pretty much everything under the sun.”
Although garden is low-maintenance in summer, needing just a few hours care a week, Kloese says, “I’m hoping I can let things go as we get older and just maintain the edges of the beds. There are plenty of native and [spring] ephemerals so the trees will grow into woodland.”
But, after casting a critical eye across the garden, the plant collector in Kloese says, “I just need more places for plants.”
Plantswoman Judy Kloese of Batavia shares these tips:
Good Read. “If you only could have one garden book, it should be a reference book and my favorite is the ‘American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.’” (DK Publishing, 2004, 1,104 pages, $80.)
Plant Collector. Master Gardener. Native Plant Enthusiast. Composer. Transformer. These are just a few of the labels that Judy Kloese wears. In the 34 years since she and her husband Lee moved to Batavia, she has developed an exquisite garden that began as a blank slate around their new home. The only hint that this sprawling 1 2/3-acre garden was once farmland is the old milk house that sits behind the pumpkin patch.
“My grandfather had said ‘if it doesn’t provide fruit, don’t plant it’ so I started with an orchard,” Kloese said. Although the apple, cherry and apricot trees she planted in the 1970’s have slowly declined or died, she has added hundreds of new trees and shrubs, many, such as bur oak and red bud, that she started from seed or grew from seedlings. Two bur oaks and a scarlet oak are now more than 25 feet tall and the arborvitae seedlings, planted as an English-style evergreen privacy hedge tower over a border of perennials.
“The kids were young and trees take little care,” Kloese says. “It was a learning experience. As soon as I got a house, I discovered these latent botanical tendencies.” By the 1990s, with her three children grown, Kloese, a pre-school teacher, had time to pursue a Master Gardener’s certificate, take additional gardening classes and for 12 years, she’s worked at Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles.
“This is a learning process—every year we make the beds bigger,” she says. The bucolic setting is filled with English bluebells, snowdrop and allium in spring to coneflowers and prairie grasses in summer. Her tree collecting has produced a Korean maple with great fall color—“a tough tree as an alternative to the tender Japanese maples,” she says—to Carolina silverbell, striped-bark maple, dogwoods, hickories, sweet gum, katsura and tulip tree. Although she begins designing the gardens in her minds’ eye, she eventually puts the designs on paper.
In some ways, she has designed a yin-yang garden, where formal meets informal and native prairie plants rub stems with cultivated perennials. The fine-textured fountain-like leaves of prairie dropseed provide a sweeping edge to a flower border that includes Joe Pye weed, prairie dropseed, ‘Blue Heaven’ bluestem grass, helenium, prairie smoke and amsonia. Elsewhere, tightly pruned boxwood is used for the same effect as an entry way to another garden room flanked by two European beech trees.
Ponderosa pines, Swiss stone pines and white pines—started from seed in a cone—provide color and texture in winter. Striped-bark maple is growing under an ash tree that will be replaced.
She and her husband cut the grass together with two small mowers but the lawn is slowly shrinking to make way for more plants. “We do it for exercise twice a week,” she says.
“What I particularly appreciate about Judy Kloese’s garden is her love of trees, says garden coach Shirley Remes (http://www.shirleyremes.com/) of South Elgin. “She plants trees every year with an emphasis on natives.”
Last year, Kloese was one of 18 candidates from across the state who received a certification in perennials from the Illinois Certified Nursery Professional program. “She is a plant collector extraordinaire,” says co-worker Kevin McGowen of Midwest Groundcovers in St. Charles . “She has pretty much everything under the sun.”
Although garden is low-maintenance in summer, needing just a few hours care a week, Kloese says, “I’m hoping I can let things go as we get older and just maintain the edges of the beds. There are plenty of native and [spring] ephemerals so the trees will grow into woodland.”
But, after casting a critical eye across the garden, the plant collector in Kloese says, “I just need more places for plants.”
Plantswoman Judy Kloese of Batavia shares these tips:
Good Read. “If you only could have one garden book, it should be a reference book and my favorite is the ‘American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants.’” (DK Publishing, 2004, 1,104 pages, $80.)
Start Small. She starts many trees from seed in pots and then transplants them into prepared areas of the garden.
Room with a View. “I plant almost everything so I can see it from indoors.” Her next project is a pergola that will provide a shady spot to sit. “It will be placed so I can look out and into the sunny areas of the garden,” she says.
Recycle. “We never throw anything away, we reuse things.” When they replaced the patio, the stones became the base of the fire pit. The milk house-turned-garden shed was rescued from the developer’s wrecking ball and a dead apricot tree was transformed as a trellis for a climbing hydrangea vine.
Recycle. “We never throw anything away, we reuse things.” When they replaced the patio, the stones became the base of the fire pit. The milk house-turned-garden shed was rescued from the developer’s wrecking ball and a dead apricot tree was transformed as a trellis for a climbing hydrangea vine.
Favorite Sources:
Midwest Groundcovers, 6N800 IL Route 25, St Charles. 847-742-1790 or http://www.midwestgroundcovers.com/
Possibility Place Nursery, 7548 W. Monee-Manhattan Road, Monee, 708-534-3988 or http://www.possibilityplace.com/
(c) 2010 Nina A. Koziol and the Chicago Tribune.
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