“From Garden to Table” features 250 recipes and garden hints from club members as well as local chefs and places of interest: Fiora’s Moveable Feast, Grahams,   Alain Roby, The Little Traveler, Niche, The Herrington Inn, Cocoa Bean, Mill Race Inn, The Little Owl, Geneva Spice House and Urban Grill.
Also unique to the book are tablescape ideas and tips to create garden-inspired table settings.
Local artist and garden club member Kathy Johns painted the cover art featuring a Fox River picnic tablescape.
Proceeds from the cookbook sales will help fund scholarships for local students and support the club’s mission to promote Geneva beautification.
Cookbooks can be purchased for $20 at the following retailers: Moveable Feast, Scentimental Gardens and Spring Bluff Nursery, as well as the club website, www.genevagardenclub.com.

Prairie flowers blaze with color in the front yard of Pat Hill's Elgin home.

            Pat Hill thinks our landscapes should reflect our natural heritage, not be just “McDonald-ized” renditions that use plants that can be seen anywhere in the country.

            “I show people how to connect with the natural world around us by planning an exuberant, sustainable, diverse, carefree garden that reflects the place we live in,” she said.

            Exuberant, diverse and carefree are certainly good words to describe Hill’s own yard, where she has planted native plants in a traditional garden style.

            “I just think it’s incredibly beautiful, and it is also so bountiful,” she said. “It attracts bees and butterflies and is so colorful. There’s nothing subtle about it. I also like the feeling that these plants were here before the Europeans came. It gives me a sense of pride.”

Hill/Remes-3

            Hill was working as a real estate agent when she decided to leave that field in 1982 and do what she always wanted to do. She started taking classes in ornamental horticulture at McHenry College, and launched her landscape design business. Her business grew, and then she decided to start specializing in perennial gardens. Shortly after that, prairie’s caught her eye.

            “I had seen the prairie at the Chicago Botanic Garden and then Sears did their prairie garden at their property in Hoffman Estates. I went out there to look at that a lot,” she said.

            Hill hooked up with another friend who had a prairie garden, and they visited the Schulenberg Prairie at Morton Arboretum, attended the Nature Conservancy’s annual prairie festival, and visited Horlock Hill Prairie in St. Charles. “I would go there with my camera and notebook and take pictures and notes,” she said.

            She started taking classes specializing in native plants at St. Charles Park District and read cover-to-cover the books on Chicago area native plants by Dick Young and Floyd Swink.

            “I finally came to the conclusion that you had to do this [use of native plants] all the way,” she said, and launched her business Pat Hill Prairie Garden Design.

            Her yard is a perfect example of that. In the front yard, it is a designed prairie, using black-eyed Susans, mountain mint, prairie blazing star, cup plant, wild quinine, nodding wild onion and rattlesnake master, among others. In a savannah area, she uses Joe-Pye weed, black-eyed Susan, white snakeroot, Short’s aster, elm-leafed goldenrod, various sedges and woodland grasses, foxglove beardtongue and purple coneflower. All of this surrounds a 1927 restored Sears house on the west side of Elgin.

            “I wanted a historical house with a yard so I could garden, and this is perfect,” she said, explaining there was no landscape to speak of when she moved in. Now, her corner yard explodes with interest year-round.

             Hill also designed the award-winning display “Garden of the Great Spirit” for the Plain Dirt Gardeners that won best of show, among other honors, at last year’s Chicago Flower & Garden Show at Navy Pier.

            Native plants aren’t only beautiful, they also provide habitat, and are good for the environment, says Hill.

            “Their deep roots draw down to prevent flooding and run-off,” she said.

            Hill encourages people to learn more about native plants and to use them in their yards.

            “Midwesterners don’t know all of what’s available,” she said. “We have to develop our own look.”

An array of spring bulbs add stunning color to this lovely entrance to the Lewis home.

            Steven is a doctor, and Barbara runs his office—both stressful jobs, so when they come home, they want a restful, serene space.

            Initially, their location had a lot of problems–front yard builder sidewalk right next to house with bad view, a small, sunken patio in the back that drained toward the house, and deep, dark woods beyond filled with garlic mustard, etc.

            As you can see now, the front entrance has a series of landings with colorful flowers that succeed in half-day sun on the north side of the house and attract birds and bees. Shrubs are arranged to screen the bad view.

            “I have lots of flowering shrubs, I have something in bloom continually up until the sweet summer clethra, which is the last blooming thing,” said Barbara. “There’s continual fragrance as well. I planted creeping thyme at the edges so you can walk on it and it’s aromatic.”

            Barbara planted all the containers herself.

            She also designed the planting station at the side of the house, that also holds tools and birdseed for all her feeders, and had a carpenter build it. With the potting area at waist level, she no longer has backaches from bending over planting pots.

            The back patio now is a series of spaces with nice structure that looks good all year long, and has a simple water feature.

            “It has a zen-like feeling,” said the landscape designer.

            “Now, when you look outdoors from inside, it opens up the house and you feel as if you are part of the outdoors,” said Lewis.  

            Lights that create a dappled effect are hung in the trees. “We get up at 5:15 a.m. every day to work out and it is really lovely with little pools of dappled light,” said the homeowner  She likes the serenity of the year-round green of the boxwood and pachysandra that is highlighted in summer with annuals.

            The woodland area was given more light by limbing up the trees, junky small trees and undergrowth were removed, and shade-loving perennials and wildflowers have been added. There is a curved walk, the bench is halfway down the walk, making a pleasant spot to stop, rest, look at the plants, have a glass of wine.

            With the designer, they have also planted more understory trees.

            “We have Virginia creeper and hydrangea going up some of the trees, and have strategically left some deadwood for woodpeckers. It’s not supposed to be a sculptured garden, but a woodland. We are trying to be mindful of planting in the woods.”

           The landscape was installed by Pat Francissen of Francissen Landscape Group in St. Charles.