On a snowy February morning four years ago, Chalet, a third generation, family-owned landscape, nursery and garden center retail business on Chicago's North Shore, was approached to help create a garden that would celebrate the rich legacy of Illinois citizens in the green industry.
The end result is a Heritage Garden at the University of Illinois Arboretum in Champaign, Urbana, which will break ground in spring of 2009. Robert Milani, senior landscape architect for Chalet, led a design team of University of Illinois graduates, including Mark Webster of Chalet, Ryan Kettelkamp of Kettelkamp and Kettelkamp Landscape Architecture, Evanston, Ill., and Kurt Pflederer and Steve Boss of Clarence Davids & Company, Matteson, Ill. The team has worked closely with university officials to design and implement the Heritage Garden.
"Chalet is honored to be involved in a project that showcases the unique contributions and achievements of Illinois plantspeople in a beautiful and educational garden at a university that is at the forefront of the United States green industry," Milani said. "This has been an incredible opportunity to give back to the university and to leave a legacy for the future. The Heritage Garden will be a horticultural destination like no other in Illinois."
The garden will serve as an essential gateway and point of orientation for visitors to the Arboretum. People enter through the Visitors Center where they can learn more about the garden that awaits them. With a framework of main brick pathways laid out on axial rays and in concentric rings, the Heritage Garden has an underlying logical structure that facilitates exploration. To add an air of mystery and discovery, a secondary web of random, brick-edged, graveled radial pathways is laid over the garden's grid, generating an irregular pattern of varying garden beds and open spaces.
Planting beds are divided into different types of gardens: perennial and ornamental grass meadows, conifer collections, and mixed shrub and tree borders, which provide the necessary stage upon which to display horticultural achievements. After exploring the Heritage Garden, visitors will be oriented out into the greater Arboretum to discover other collections and further explore the contributions of Illinois plantspeople.
"Our goal is to showcase the historically important breeding and plant selection skills of people who call or have called Illinois their home," Milani said.
The Heritage Garden's perennial and ornamental grass meadows hearken back to the days of settlement, when Illinois was carpeted with grasses and prairie flowers. The foundation of herbaceous plant development is firmly rooted in Illinois' prairie soils.
Illinois conifers are assembled into "islands" of needle and broadleaf evergreens in both tree and shrub forms, which provide structure and interest to the Heritage Garden and illustrate the depth and significance of the contribution of Illinois plantspeople to the horticultural world.
The design features a mixed shrub and tree border, which highlights Illinois'
rich heritage in the development of ornamental trees and shrubs.
Compositions of deciduous woody plant materials are gathered together in classic mixed border plantings, punctuated with specimens or groupings of larger deciduous trees and then underplanted with additional layers of ornamental shrubs.
Throughout this collection are lawn garden rooms, intimate spaces that create a feeling of openness within the confines of the plantings. The spine of the garden is a series of event lawns which span the area between the Visitors Center and the Hartley Garden, and will serve as tentable open
spaces for events and gatherings.
The University of Illinois is seeking donations to underwrite the cost of the Heritage Garden. Email bdickers@uiuc.edu for more information.
Chalet is located at 3132 Lake Street in Wilmette, Ill., just off the Edens Expressway. Chalet's landscape division is housed on a 28,000-square-foot complex on 16 acres in North Chicago, Ill. Chalet also operates a 183-acre growing nursery in Salem, Wis.
For more information on Chalet, call 847-256-0561 or visit www.ChaletNursery.com