Garden Gait Walk opens door to Lisle landscapes

Visiting a garden is a learning experience.

It can reveal much about its owner. It can be delightful, calming, reminiscent or practical. It is always fun for other gardeners.

The 16th annual Lisle Woman's Club Garden Gait Walk and Craft Fair on Sunday, June 10, will offer both seasoned gardeners and newbies an opportunity to visit, enjoy and learn from six unique gardens and a conservation area.

The self-guided tour begins at the Museums of Lisle Station Park, 921 School St. in downtown, and runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Tickets for the walk are $15 in advance and $20 on the day. Addresses and directions to the gardens come with the ticket purchase.

The craft fair includes garden-related vendors and 20 raffle baskets.

The adventure offers guests both insights and ideas from local gardeners. Here's a sneak peek.

Dingman & Wilson

When Steve Dingman and Susan Wilson bought their house, the slim row of foundation plantings needed help.

"Our garden is designed the same way I paint a landscape," said Wilson, an artist. "Short things in front, middle-size things in the middle and tall things in the back. Then I put in a tall plant right up front as an explanation point to keep the eye moving throughout the garden."

Wilson, who worked in a greenhouse at the start of her career, particularly likes the rose of Sharon hibiscus for its eye-catching appeal.

She propagates her varied hostas from flowers that she allows to dry on the plant as they turn into pods. She then collects the seeds in the early fall, scratches the dirt's surface where she wants another plant, places the seeds, covers with a couple sticks, and adds a rock to keep squirrels at bay.

Wilson comes from a family of gardeners, which are represented in the garden with its variety of 37 peonies, some of which date back 75 years to a family cemetery plot in Iowa. A magenta peony with its yellow center commands attention near the front door.

A Persian lilac near the fence in the rear yard was a gift from a friend. On the garage side of the property, a dwarf hydrangea, rose of Sharon, coral bells in a mustard green, blue swamp irises, a sum and substance hosta, and a pink geranium ground cover reflect the art in gardening.

Rizzo

Gardener and artist Jen Rizzo remembers she did not like pulling weeds as a child, so it came as a bit of a surprise, even to her, that she now is working to create an English cottage garden look mixed with a natural woodland.

Hailing from a family of adept gardeners, Rizzo treasures her grandmother's hosta divisions, another grandmother's peony, and an aunt's flagstones. She appreciates a wealth of information and plants from her mother, who is a landscape designer and florist.

"My mother gives me advice, plants, and we go on nursery tours together," said Rizzo. "Sharing plants is the best kind of sharing."

Rizzo and her husband, Nick, like to mix colors and textures, while including different types of show plants such as the Harry Lauders Walking Stick tree with its gnarled branches. She gravitates toward corals, pinks and greens, using different varieties of coral bells, weigela, sedums, salvia and hostas.

In the organic garden, the family grows its own raspberries, potatoes, apples, blueberries, asparagus, tomatoes, beans, strawberries and more.

The secret garden area with its white arbor was planted for a relaxing stroll around the backyard patio and deck. It is lush, asymmetrical and anything but formal. It is where Rizzo paints with plants.

For 18 years she slowly added trees and plants to the lot to change the original bare basics to a lovely one-of-a-kind garden.

Battle

Organic gardening is important to Dot and Tom Battle, who have a strong commitment to amending their soil. Yard waste and kitchen scraps all go into making their compost.

"Gardening is from the soil up, and the most important part of a plant is in the root system," Dot Battle said. "Natural nutrients in the soil is always putting something good into the plant."

The couple's yard is a registered natural habitat, providing food, shelter, water and a place for animals and birds to flourish.

"We really like to encourage the birds to our yard," Tom said. The hummingbirds loved the honeysuckle vine last year, and the couple adds hummingbird feeders.

In containers, Dot found an interesting plant at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle called jade princess millet, which she added as her "thriller" centered in a container this year. To this container she added some ornamental peppers and heather to create the "thriller, spiller and filler" in her container.

Dot suggests two favorite plants for a sunny location are the dependable Baptisia false indigo and thermopsis chinensis sofia pea bush, both in yellow. Other notables are Empress Woo, a giant hosta, and a mounding clematis.

Kairies

Tilla Kairies started with dirt and grass when she and her husband, Walter, had their house built 28 years ago. The hands-on gardener, started with a few trees and the memory of her mother's lovely flowers in Germany.

Today, the garden is filled with eye-catching plants, eight fountains, and garden art sprinkled throughout for interest.

Visitors will want to see the sunflower girls on the side yard that Tilla created.

Over the years, Walter added 30 handcrafted bird houses that gives the yard an old-world charm. He also built a large brick patio, a tree house for the grandchildren, and a screened gazebo.

Tilla gets her inspiration for changes to the garden in the winter as she longingly looks out at her dormant yard. Then, at the first signs of spring, she is ready to put her ideas into place.

Gardening is a learning experience. Tilla took a little shoot with roots of a bleeding heart plant she liked and added it to the front yard where it is doing very well. She also shares her successes with friends and neighbors. The two basic components every garden should have are trees and flowers, Tilla said.

"Lots of flowers," she said.

Palicka

For 16 years, a menagerie of trees, bushes, and weeds were gutted to add an inviting family pool and deck to the rear property of Linda and Rich Palicka. The decking around the pool, adjoining arbor, pergola and stone work were created by Rich. Linda keeps all the plants that trim the pool and surrounding grass, flowers and yard neat and inviting.

Linda also propagates all her own canna and sweet potato vines. She preserves the red canna rhizomes in the basement for the winter. For the vines, she started with an organic potato that sprouted and grew. Now she plants and grows all the vines she needs for her collection of flower pots.

"We are so excited to invite hummingbirds to our yard with hyacinth bean vines, which grow from seeds every year," said Linda, who saves the seeds from the bean pods to plant for the next year's crop.

Lilies that were a gift from their son have found a happy place to grow. A favorite is a bleeding heart. Lilac bushes and lilies of the valley are prolific in a sunny side yard that reminds Linda of her mother's garden.

"I've learned to not have high expectations," Linda said. "When I see something coming back and growing, I am as happy as can be."

Whitnell

For 20 years, gardeners John and Lori Whitnell combined their efforts to create an inviting retreat for humans, plants, birds and animals. A bird guide is handy to identify distinctive visitors to the number of feeders John maintains.

Gardening is ever-evolving, with the couple's goal of having color from spring to fall.

"We have hundreds of bulbs in the early spring, then it moves into time for the alliums and day lilies, oriental lilies, azaleas and rhododendron and hostas," Lori said. "In the fall, will be black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, profusion zinnias, hydrangea and burning bushes."

Bright purple astilbe, herbs and vegetables are tucked between plants

"You have to find the happy place for your plant," Lori said. "We want the plant to do well without a lot of fuss and watering."

The couple finds it effective to move pots of flowers around for color. A little teapot art piece is a thoughtful gift from a friend.

"Two super easy things I think everyone could do in their garden is to add some spring bulbs, especially here in this area when we so look forward to spring," Lori said. "Then I would encourage everyone to plant day lilies because they are super easy and just keep blooming all summer."

PrairieWalk Pond

Nature management with native landscaping and water conservation elements are essential components of PrairieWalk Pond.

Designed to manage stormwater, the area invites visitors to stroll the paved nature trail and enjoy the beauty of native landscaping. The two-acre pond can hold 1.5 million gallons of stormwater.

There are more than 100 varieties of native plants, grasses and flowers, with a small ephemeral wetland, said Marilyn Sucoe, stormwater administrator for the village.

At the pond, LWC members plan to share free plants members started from seeds from their gardens.