Many eager gardeners decide to tackle expansive gardens on their own. While you can save money by not hiring help, you pay for it in extra time spent in the garden. When, eventually, you notice Fido is looking a little pudgy because he hasn’t been walked in a month, you discover your kitchen has become a highly effective science experiment, and you wonder just how many times you can wear the same pair of shorts before they can stand up on their own, it might be a good idea to invest in some time-saving measures for you and your large garden. Here are just a few ideas for saving time in the garden:

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Chicago struck me immediately as a gardening city. These folks cram a lot of plant-life into their concrete jungle, and it isn’t meek pink impatiens or pretty purple pansies. Chicago gardeners like it hot and exotic.

The median plantings along Michigan Avenue showed off this love of warm color and looked easy to maintain (with irrigation systems in place, city workers don’t need to dodge the crazy traffic to water). Besides these planters, every office building seemed to have a pocket garden here or a window box there, all stuffed with red-leaved grasses or flaming orange dahlias. At one point, I even saw a tropical garden on top of a parking garage. Call me a little naive when it comes to urban gardening, but this seemed to be a truly innovative use of space since nobody ever really wants to park on top of a parking garage anyway.

We made Millennium Park our first stop on Monday morning. This 24.5-acre playground on Michigan Avenue has so many amazing features (my son really loved the “spitting waterfall” aka the Crown Fountain and the Cloud Gate sculpture shown above). Besides the drool-worthy Lurie Garden, the park is packed with plants and planters, trees and lawn. I saw no fewer than four gardeners on duty, keeping the place tidy and trimmed.

I loved the serpentine BP Bridge, which snakes across Columbus Drive to connect the park with Daley Bicentennial Plaza. The outside of the walkway shines in the sunlight (courtesy of hundreds of stainless steel panels), and every little nook and cranny is stuffed with a pocket-sized prairie garden.

The grasses, in particular, showed just how beautiful native landscaping can be when thoughtfully designed and diligently maintained.

Inside Millennium Park lies the 2.5-acre Lurie Garden. Designed by a team that included famed natural landscape designer Piet Oudolf, the gardens showcase a variety of native plants (with a few exotics thrown in for good measure). I read up on the garden and design team before my trip, and their online plant list helped me identify some of the native plants I haven’t yet met.

The gardens teemed with insect life. I don’t think I’ve seen so many honeybees in one place since I lived in the apple country of Central New York. The monarchs and swallowtails also flitted about, delighting in the pre-autumn abundance of swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata, shown above), tansy and clover. This visit was pre-bumblebee sting for my son, so he happily chased those fat fellows up and down the many walkways that wander willy nilly throughout the gardens. (I just recently learned this type of path design mimics what the prairie school architecture folks, particularly
Frank Lloyd Wright, did in their home plans. They felt a design should reveal itself slowly, both to make the viewer slow down to appreciate their immediate surroundings and offer an element of mystery to urge them to continue on their way.)

As I switched my focus from the individual plants to the overall design, I noticed the layers of plants and how they played off the layers of the city. While the organic waves of prairie contrast greatly with the sharp-edged concrete behemoths that are their backdrop, this layering helped weave the garden and cityscape together. This is no garden simply plopped in the middle of a bunch of buildings. It was meant to be, and is, a connection to Chicago’s prairie roots.

I only have a couple of photos from my Boldt Castle trip because my camera batteries died (and I didn’t have a back-up set). It turned out to be okay. I’m not sure where I heard the grounds of the castle were amazingly (and formally) landscaped, but it turned out to be misinformation.

Most of Heart Island has a park-like atmosphere, with towering oaks and rocky outcroppings. Near the docks, there is a small herb garden edged with grey santolina with flowers laid out in heart shapes. Beds of annuals dot small spots near the castle, offering a colorful contrast to the mostly green landscape.

After my sister’s wedding ceremony, I hightailed it over to the Italian Garden, hoping to catch a glimpse of awesomeness and still make it back to the boat. The Italian Garden sits on top of the service tunnel, an underground passage that would have been used to move goods from the servant’s dock to storage rooms in the castle basement. This garden, what the castle literature calls a promenade terrace, would have been a formal contrast to the otherwise natural landscape, with a geometric layout and Italian marble statuary.

There were a few beds of annuals on the terrace, but I don’t think they have recreated the gardens as planned (most of their money has, understandably, gone to refurbishing the castle and other buildings). The statues have not found their way here, either. They apparently made it all the way across the ocean from Italy, only to sink in a boathouse nearby, with no word on where they live now. As for flowers, one bed of begonias shouted for attention, so I obliged with a quick snap before my camera died again.

On the edge of the garden, near the castle, the dove-cote rises to meet the sky. On top of this stone tower, a wood pigeon house allows birds to roost. Apparently the Boldt family fancied fancy fowl, and this was the first stone structure built on the island. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to peek inside.

I think the grandiose buildings overshadow the grounds at Boldt Castle. I would imagine George Boldt intended it to be that way, what with the impressiveness of his castle contrasting greatly with the rugged landscape surrounding the St. Lawrence. Or, maybe Mr. Boldt recognized that rough beauty, and chose to let it speak for itself.