November/December 2001

I subscribe to an online garden writers list service, which I enjoy (despite the 30 minutes of email I now plow through every day), because it keeps me apprised of the latest goings-on in the "green industry" of garden centers, garden magazines, wholesale/retail nurseries, seed catalogues, web sites and the like.

Things are, shall we say, "in flux." Certain long-time national companies are going out of business while cyberspace upstarts that hit the ground running a few years ago have now stumbled and been left lying in the dust.

One exchange in particular caught my attention. Several big-name web sites have recently closed and in the search for causes, some writers commented that the sites much-vaunted cultural-information-targeted-to-your-region had turned out to be so general it was virtually useless. In addition, they noted, buying plants online just isn't as much fun as a jaunt to your favorite local garden center where you can sniff and touch and eyeball the merchandise.

Up went the antennas.

There, on the screen before me, writers from across the country were, in effect, agreeing that Chicagoland Gardening magazine offers a special service that gardeners want and need. And so do our fine local garden centers.

From the inception of this magazine, our goal has been to provide you, the gardeners in this region, with information you can use. We show beautiful gardens developed by both homeowners and professionals, based on the premise that this beauty can also be yours. We highlight plants of all kinds that thrive in this region so you can spend your shopping money wisely. We tell you how and when to perform certain gardening tasks, with all our stories and all our information coming from local writers and local gardening experts.

The feedback tells us our basic concept is sound. "I love your magazine" is the refrain that greets me whenever I visit garden clubs, with that comment invariably followed up by raves about how useful the magazine is because it's local. This is what we like to hear.

In this issue we showcase two great (and local) garden guys who have developed exceptionally beautiful gardens in this area by using evergreens and making themselves experts in the process. One is the late Bill Brincka, a former sculpture professor at the Art Institute of Chicago, whose northwest Indiana garden is a virtual arboretum. He acquired astonishing collections of conifers, hostas, daylilies, daffodils, rhododendrons, but writer Susan Crawford visited him for his hollies, some of which tower 20-30 feet tall.

The other gardener was smitten by plants when barely a teenager and is even now only a sophomore in college, but Brent Markus is surely on his way to a brilliant career in horticulture. Writer Adele Kleine raved about him at one of our editorial meetings, and we've been calling him the "conifer kid" ever since. How many parents do you know whose property was landscaped by their teenage son?

We also have a beauty makeover to show you one that transformed a bare-bones Park Ridge corner lot into a multi-roomed small-garden masterpiece. Good design and evergreens (in this case, yew and boxwood) ensure that this garden is gorgeous year-round. The firm of Rocco Fiore and Sons, Libertyville, did the construction and continues to maintain the property.

So here we have not just one but three different approaches to the four-season garden. Each is lovely, each has much to teach us, and each was developed as a response to the specific conditions that exist in Chicagoland. Bringing you the best our region has to offer this is our mission, our inspiration, and our special joy.