Homeowners had different approaches to landscaping featured gardens

 

BY KEVIN BEESE | Contributor

July 8, 2013 2:22PM

Master Gardener Thayer Jabin (right) speaks with Rose Chen about Jabin’s work in the back yard of Caren and Walter Van Slyke during the annual Oak Park Conservatory’s Garden Walk. | Kevin Beese~For Sun-Times Media

Updated: July 8, 2013 2:50PM

OAK PARK — Mike Reust brought Laterite stone from Calcutta and a spiritual house from Tibet to accentuate his landscaping.

Caren and Walter Van Slyke brought a jumping rope lady statue from Sarasota, Fla.

Paul Kotkovich brought flowers from Lowe’s.

Homeowners featured in this year’s Oak Park Conservatory Garden Walk say it doesn’t matter how you get to your landscaping happy place, it is just important to get there. They agree designing your landscaping is a personal choice and something that can be done by any homeowner regardless of income or how green his or her thumb is.

“I’m one who’d rather try and fail than not try anything at all,” said Kotkovich, who with his wife, Angela, did all the landscaping, including a pond and a trellis with Concord grapes, at their home on Le Moyne Parkway, Oak Park.

Kotkovich, who works in the film industry, said he and and his wife, who is a graphic designer, work well together. He said Angela knew instantly that certain tall grass would pop with a certain background.

“We work together, we argue together,” Kotkovich said. “She has a good pointer finger. She points and says, ‘This will go here. That will go there.’”

He said it has taken 10 years to get the home’s landscaping where is today and there has been “lots of trial and error.”

Having gardened since a kid, Kotkovich said he enjoys doing the work himself. He said he especially liked creating the backyard pond, which includes two koi and various goldfish.

How a homeowner gets to that marquis landscape that earns a spot on the annual Garden Walk is a matter of opinion. Individuals like Kotkovich and Reust, who lives on Belleforte Avenue in Oak Park, with his wife, Ann Maxwell, have gotten there by handling the landscaping responsibilities themselves.

For others, like the Van Slykes, on South Humphrey Avenue in Oak Park, it has been through the work of a designer that their back yard has flourished. Thayer Jabin, a master gardener, has worked with the Van Slykes for 15 years and converted what was a shade back yard into a sun back yard when two large trees were lost – one to a storm, the other to emerald ash borerers.

Caren Van Slyke said that by getting a designer and staging the work, you can get exactly what you want for landscaping.

“A designer will work with you,” Van Slyke said.

“If you don’t have the vision to devise something, a designer can come with something for you,” she added.

“We know we are not going to be in the house for 20 or 30 years, so we wanted something that would take only about five years to get going. A designer can work with you on those things.”