Inspired by Piet Oudolf, designer of the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park, Melissa has created a showcase of form, texture and structure in her suburban garden.
Melissa’s front garden evokes an English garden aesthetic using Midwest natives. It is constructed to bloom continuously from May through October. Melissa does not cut the plants down in winter, allowing insects to over-winter in the stems, providing habitat for non-migrating birds and critters, and a privacy screen for the front of the house. She cuts down the stems in spring and does her hand weeding then. A small strip of lawn helps formalize the garden.
Every action she takes in her yard is from a sustainability point of view, particularly water conservation. She has solar rain barrel irrigation systems. A stone path acts as a French drain. Like all of our gardeners, she uses no chemical fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides.
In the backyard she is solarizing the lawn to kill grass and weed seeds without destroying beneficial soil microorganisms. After six to eight weeks, the yard should be ready for a planned kitchen garden, a native garden, and a portion set aside for a no mow eco-lawn.
To prepare for planting espalier fruit trees next to the garage, she used a Japanese wood preservation technique called Shou Sugi Ban on the cedar posts to attach the trees. The process uses no toxic chemicals. It involves charring the cedar, brushing the char away with a wire brush and oiling the wood with Tung oil. The process adds 50-80 years to the life of the wood.
Her Monarch waystation plants include:
- Mistflower (Eupatorium coelestinum)
- Bergamot ( Monarda fistulosa)
- Red Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata)
- Smooth Aster (Aster laevis)
- Prairie Blazingstar (Liatris pycnostachya)
- Ironweed (Vernonis fasciculata)
- Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis)
- Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea)
- Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
- Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia sipholitica)
- Sweet Joe Pye Weed ( Eupatorium purpureum)
- Culver’s Root (Veronicastrum virginicum)
- Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa)
- Queen of the Prairie (Filipendula rubra)
- Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium)
- Red Beebalm (Monarda didyma)
- Sullivant’s Milkweed (Asclepias sullivanti)
- Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)
- Prairie Dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis)
- Vanilla Sweet Grass (Hierochloe odorata)
- Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum)
- Rough Blazingstar (Liatris aspera)
Photo Gallery
All photos by Keith Dadey
