The Tri-Village Garden Club maintains four different gardens in the villages of Bartlett and Streamwood. Our Streamwood garden, located in Rahlf Woods, was originally designed almost 20 years ago and through the years has become a tangled garden of plants, many aggressive plants, weeds and grasses. Some serious help was needed.
In late spring this is what we found. Tall lawn grass that towered over the plants, weeds that wound around all the stems and aggressive plants that helped to create a tangled mess. There was no way to bring order to this other than starting all over again.
Here is another view and you could hardly tell where the plants were since they were surrounded by weeds.
A few members started digging out the plants but soon realized that more help was needed.
We sent a call for help to our members and it was amazing how much quicker it went with more members working. Thank you Patti Chipman, Pat and Renee Diehn, Melody Eback, Sandy Swenson, Wally and Linda Groble, Jane Johnson and Eileen Lucietto.
Soon we were down to a few remaining plants but more work was needed. The plants that survived are butterfly weed, hostas, iris, a few phlox, a blue balloon flower and a false sunflower. The rocks that edged the garden were so deep that you barely noticed them. There were also many rocks that had been totally buried.
One of our members, Julia Olsta, made it her mission to uncover the hidden rocks and created several tiers for planting. This was the turning point. We now had a beautiful space in which to plant our new garden.
The first plants to go in were Zagreb coreopsis. We planted 5 of them to give the garden some color.
Along the bottom tier we planted blue Veronica, Gaillardia (red blanket flowers), and Shasta daisies. Cone flowers were added to the second tier.
We transplanted some Monarda (bee balm), Phlox, and Echinacea (cone flowers) from a member’s garden.
Finally, the finishing touch. The Park District of the Village of Streamwood donated mulch for our garden. Thank you Streamwood! What a difference that made.
Eileen and Melody look almost too happy with the job of shoveling mulch. 
Wally is adding more mulch to that side of the garden 
We hope you enjoyed watching our garden makeover and, hopefully, it will inspire you to tackle some of the garden projects that you might be putting off.
