Comments on: Evergreens Needed

By: Ellen

Ellen — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 02:03:40 +0000

My husband is a conifer geek and his favorite nursery is Rich’s Foxwillow Pines Nursery in Woodstock, IL. http://www.richsfoxwillowpines.com/ We make a point of going there at least every fall to walk around their property with our kids. They have beautiful conifers, maples, and their nursery is planted in a “natural” setting, not rows and rows of trees. Oak Park has several of their Rich’s trees featured in cul-de-sacs that have been replanted after major construction jobs. If you contact me, I can tell you where some of them are so you can take a look at some neat species.

By: kate

kate — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:27:43 +0000

I’m also chiming in for native grasses, or any native planting. You can find very many pretty native plants and they will require less maintenance then something non-native!!! Bonus that they provide habitat to honeybees, insects, birds, etc which have suffered from a lot of habitat destruction over the years.

There is a nursery I know of – who I am in no way affiliated with, but our school is a customer of theirs!, which you should check out. All of their plants are native and they are probably not too far from you. You can see their stock online to get ideas and they are really helpful over the phone if you want to describe the area you are looking to fill.

Possibility Place Nursery, Monee, IL.
http://www.possibilityplace.com/

By: down pillow

down pillow — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:08:02 +0000

Oh, I’m sooo ready for the snow to be gone!!!

By: Kristin

Kristin — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 14:33:53 +0000

Hello! I live about 4 hours north of you in Wisconsin, and we planted Skyrocket Junipers to cover up a hideous fence that our neighbors planted. While they can get 15 feet tall, they only get 2-3 feet wide. They are junipers, but their blue-silver color is really lovely. I planted them with some Pinky Winky hydrangeas (can take some shade) and hot pink Knockout shrub roses. For smaller evergreens, have you thought about mugo pines? I second what other people have said about using native grasses too, they are great.

By: Leslie

Leslie — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:58:53 +0000

Hi,
We live in Oak Park and have three winter gem boxwoods in the backyard. We do some fertilizing in the spring but other than that nothing special. These boxwoods are free flowing in their habit and get about 2 feet high, but they are sturdy! We got ours at Lowes but I think you should be able to find them almost anywhere. You may want to try the Morton Arboretum’s plant sale in the spring to look for other varieties that are more winter tolerant for the midwest.

By: Nnax

Nnax — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:17:30 +0000

have you looked at where the sun is coming from? If you have them in the wrong place in a few years time they’ll block out the sun and you have to spend a fortune getting them cut down!

Our neighbours have some massive evergreens along the fence – they completely block out the sun from our garden :(

By: Ashley

Ashley — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:43:49 +0000

I’m excited to see what you come up with. This will be the first year I’ll be tackling the landscape, and I’m really looking forward about it.

By: Mikki

Mikki — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 00:40:42 +0000

That looks amazingly similar to the backyard of our first house. We planted concord grapes (along the fence), our neighbor’s father was a grape farmer and he gave us the plants. They grew like crazy and covered the fence very thickly by the second year (and looked beautiful and smelled great).This was in Rochester NY- probably very similar climate to yours.

By: amy k

amy k — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 04:11:58 +0000

I stopped reading comments after about 20- I could be repeating….

AborVomit- I say, don’t plant those!

Heavy- Blue Spruce & other pines; can buy shaped or large topiary like
middle layer- Love the Japanese Maple (as prev. mentioned), non fruit producing fruit trees (all kinds- Bradford Pear is one), other small trees (tall/narrow)
lighter/front- annuals, Hosta, Lilies, groundcover AND flowering Kale which is great in the late fall when there is no color left, they are a punch

And lastly, GRASSES. I think for the gardener, they are the new black, kinda like Hosta has been for the last few years. We have many grasses, but my favs are the red bloodgrass and the bigass, ahem, I mean big grass that stands almost 12 feet or more with plumes. In the fall when they are dry, they still stay up which would continue to offer privacy, you could wait to cut down, or not cut at all.

And Blue Fescue grows so slow, but there are other bluish grasses that add color.

Our last house had very little full sun areas and we had to be creative with plants. I started learning about grasses and groundcovers. Boring at first, but nice compared to a dead, brown garden.

Good Luck.

And great advice from the readers, nice to read such good feedback. Is it always like this here?

I’m 2 hours south of you; we’ll be seeing our spring in a few weeks!

Tilly

By: Jesselyn

Jesselyn — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 03:37:42 +0000

I know Juniper is really common in the area, but I personally love it – the smell, and when you get up close to it, it really is gorgeous with its little berries