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What started as a passionate hobby is now a full-time business for Marguerite Gluck. For nearly 18 years she and her staff of horticultural enthusiasts have been designing and installing gardens for city homeowners, mostly on Chicago's North side."We try to involve our clients in the design process as much as possible," says Gluck, who pulls stock from her private holding yard full of cutting edge plants from nurseries all over the country. "Much of our material is custom-grown especially for us and selected for the special needs of urban residential landscapes."
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Excerpts from Chicago Sunday Tribune March 11, 2001
AUG 17
The garden has landed. Or make that the forest. There are sitting in my back yard right now three yummy pear trees--two 'Chanticleer,' one'Aristocrat'-one lacy 'Veridis' Japanese maple, three daphne that smell like heaven, three holly-two girls and a boy- and six climbing hydrangea.
Already it looks better. By nightfall, it'll be a garden back there, a dappled-light garden that'll keep me from seeing civilization. I could have a fountain by tomorrow, gurgling by sundown. Stay tuned...
Marguerite came by to check out the goods. Couldn't help herself- moved this here, that there, made magic of plants the way a great chef makes a to-die-for sauce out of tomato, basil and garlic. Hauled the shovel out of the garage and had at it. Rocks went from pile to art. Clumps of grasses got divided and multiplied. A bird bath got yanked to the foot of the Japanese maple. The fleur-de-lis finial slipped into the bird bath's old place, yanked a little to the right, off center, please.
She turned it into art. I fell in love with my garden, a whole new place, in a way I never would have imagined.
AUG 18
Called Marguerite to thank her for her ideas, her inspiration and her eye. She said now we need Ted to bless it. Ted, her husband, is one of the great joys of our street, a rabbi-slash-therapist, his heart as big as the world.
AUG 19
The phone rings. It's Marguerite. She and Ted are on their way home from dinner, and they want to stop by so Ted can bless the garden. I feel the lump in my throat. I knew this garden was a sacred space for me; it's the place where once upon a time- back when it was another garden- we stood in a circle, newborn Willie and a host of people we love, anointing him in blessings.
Tonight, standing in another circle, Willie holding two candles, Marguerite holding a box of sweet and pungent spices, Ted spoke, right to Willie, about the Garden of Eden and its tree of life, and of evil and good, and how this garden would be one only of all that is good. And we stood in the glow of the candles, and I looked around at what was growing here, and I looked at Marguerite, my guide in the garden and in life, and I felt blessed all around.
The
light shadow of that circle will forever shine in my garden, my
garden that is life and is love. How many people get a rabbi who
makes housecalls in the black of a summer's night to bless the growing
things and the earth from which they come? How many people are so
blessed?