Welcome to The Spirited Gardener

about • calendar • articles• design • contact • friends • gallery • home

This summer The Spirited Gardener,Inc. has been expanding its capabilities as a Design & Install firm.  We became an Aquascape RainXchange Certified contractor and completed the Green Living Walls & Roofs Installer Certification.  Add to this Rain Gardens designed and installed and you have a growing climate of sustainability and contemporary greening.

We can install Rainbarrel configurations using many different styles of Barrels and even custom paint your City of Chicago Barrels to create a more attractive setting for your garden.  If after a time you find that the limited capacity of Rain Barrels is not sufficient for your water holding needs, we can help to create buried rain cisterns like the ones offered from Aquascapes line of products.  These below ground cistern systems offer the opportunity to create fountains and irrigation for your property from pure rain water. 

The Benefits of Rain Gardens, Rain Barrels and Cisterns are:

• helps to keep more water where it falls; reducing the amount of run-off that is taxing our city’s storm water system and washing more pollution from our city streets into Lake Michigan and the greater water shed which flows from our area down to the Mississippi River.
• makes use of our purer rain water for watering plants rather than using chlorinated municipal waters
• filters the water as it passes through the soil into the larger underground natural aquifers.
• creates beauty where once a muddy puddle may have existed
• provides a source of irrigation for the garden a few days after a rain if it’s a rain barrel and even longer if a larger cistern is installed
• provides habitat for a rapidly disappearing local ecology of birds and related fauna

Rain Barrels work best if elevated to help create better water pressure when using a hose.  Overflow can be directed into a rain swale.

So the big question that many people ask is what is sustainability?  This question is answerable from many perspectives.  When you combine rain water harvesting with the cooling effect of a green wall you have a system that can sustain itself quite well once it is established.  This is not a maintenance free system.  Most people recognize that a garden grows best in the shadow of a gardener.  But the type of maintenance is one of cultivating the garden and using organic methods of fertilizing that keep any water that does flow from our gardens into the larger system purer than chemically fertilized systems.  And wherever possible we recommend native species plants to enhance more home space for the insects and birds that originally inhabited this area.

Rain Gardens can be established right off a downspout extension starting at about 10’ from your foundation, though a well constructed Rain Garden can be even closer to the house if the ground water in the area is not high near the foundation.

We can also combine contemporary looks with bold textures and a sense of delight in the rhythm of seasonal change that different plants can provide.

Contemporary Design bringing Nature to any home

The Spirited Gardener Project Manages, Designs and Installs with Client and Environment in Mind
Our company’s structure allows for a manageable overhead because we can hire just the right professional for each aspect of a client’s project.  We work with trusted sub-contractor’s that are experienced in their field and have a strong working relationship with them.  Contact us with any questions you might have or to schedule an appointment. 

Click here to get to our contact page.

While awaiting further funding for more in-depth Spirited Gardener shows, we are releasing short videos clips onto the internet to keep the spirit of our purpose alive.  The first piece embodies a talk from Douglas W. Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens.  The piece is called Spirited Gardener: Is your garden for the birds? .  The second piece is a summary of a Sustainable Landscaping Brainstorming session I participated in at the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.  It is entitled The Spirited Gardener: IDNR Design Charette.  Hope you enjoy the pieces and that they inspire you to consider planting more natives as you grow your garden!

Our ship has landed…on December 28, 2008 at 12:30 PM, Chicago’s premiere PBS station, WTTW Channel 11, aired The Spirited Gardener’s first episode Labyrinths & Mazes.  Comcast on Demand had the show available for seven days after the initial airing.  We regret this information was not made available to share with our interested viewership but for the next round we will be more savvy.  A new era in gardening shows has begun.  Labyrinths and mazes have provided the subject matter of this first episode. The main thrust of the show: to catch the viewer’s imagination and invite them into the garden.

The Spirited Gardener looked at a very condensed history of labyrinths and mazes and visited three locations in the Chicagoland area to delve into the human experience with these unique forms of landscape.  Humorous animation was used to enhance the telling of historical tales, and little snippets of how to engage with these ideas.

In the first half of the show, Julia visited the labyrinth at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Elgin to get some first hand experience and meet the people that care for it.  Neal Harris, of Relax4life in Barrington, IL, shared stories about the labyrinth he created with the church and demonstrates some of the many ways to walk a labyrinth. 

In the second half of the show The Spirited Gardener visited the Morton Arboretum’s Maze Garden and interviewed maze designer Landscape Architect, Peggy Pelkanon.  As a close to the show, Donna Smith of the Morton Arboretum, offered her expertise on hedges and looked at some basic horticultural practices to aid shrub owners in the pruning and alignment of their hedges. 

One of the fun twists of this unique show is that the maze garden visit takes place in the winter…because every season is part of the garden!

On Sept. 18, 2008 at Unity Church in Chicago we had a grace filled launch event of the program and walked a labyrinth together.  See the Gallery for details.

 

One of Julia’s favorite past times when not working in gardens is to play, meditate and meander through the gardens of others.  She is interested in investigating the connection between the ways in which humans have given significance and meaning to Life throughout their relationship to gardens and plants. 

Interviewing people in their gardens reveals the many ways that the human Spirit can grow alongside our plant companions.

Here's a Four Minute Short of the TV Show that Aired on PBS

The Quicktime logo will indicate that the file is downloading to the page. Press play to view the video.