Red House on the Hill

Landscaping Chicago – Summer 2025

Desires:

Lush, colorful, low maintenance, and winter hardy, landscaping in the fence-line garden beds.

Concerns:

The very steep hill (even for me). The homeowner, an older woman, was unlikely to traverse that hill frequently and there was no water source that reached to the bottom of the hill, meaning she would have to hand water the plants at the bottom and go up and down the hill to fill the water can.

The prior landscaper she hired did very little consulting with the homeowner about the types of plants they chose or the maintenance required. About half of the shrubs they planted died within the year but there was little visual interest or color at a very high cost.

Plan:

Use only perennial flowers that spread, self seed, add color, and come back after a freeze. Incorporate greenery that fills out – hostas – in varying colors and sizes.

Materials:

All the plants and soil came from Home Depot and mulch from Menard’s. We considered some of the plant nurseries, but they were farther away than she wanted to commute and were priced higher than the budget she had in mind for the size and quantity of plants.

The Installation:

This took about two days of work including multiple trips with the homeowner to different stores. There was also an unseasonal heat advisory while I was there. It didn’t feel anywhere near as hot as it is in Louisiana, but I will admit, this Chicago heatwave did creep up on me and slow me down a pace.

Her property butts up to a heavily wooded area that was overgrown into her property. I pulled the heavy vines wrapped around her chain-link fence, and hand weeded both inside the beds and along the flagstone/lawn border as I went. There was one particularly invasive weed growing alongside these beds that needed a lot of attention, but was also indicative of poor lawn health.

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Final Look

Future Recommendations:

The current hose spigot was on a side of the house towards the front where no easy to source length of hose would reach. I suggested she get her plumber to add a spigot to the other side of the house and purchase a retractable hose reel that ran at least 100 ft in length so she wouldn’t have to trek too far down the hill to water the plants at the bottom.

Although the focus of this project was the ornamentals along the fence line, her lawn was also struggling: lots of bare patches and invasive weeds. We discussed that she should work with her lawn maintenance company to find an overseeding and fertilizing course of treatment over the next year. But I also suggested that she find a different lawn company than the one she was currently using because they were not trimming the majority of the weeds at the bottom of the hill. (They knew she wasn’t going down there and they were cutting corners and charging her for services half provided).

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I’m excited to return to Chicago this spring to see how everything looks after the ground thaws. Hopefully, the plants bounce back and spread out, but if not, I’ll do some touch up work.