Winter Letter from Craig

Dear Garden Friends,
The holiday hub bub is in full gear here at CBLD. The recent foot of snow we received stalled much holiday lighting plans until the first week of December, a cold start to winter decorating. Our recent finishing up with the new landscape work, outside and in, at the Deerpath Inn here in Lake Forest, has been a fun project, and it is so accessible for you all to enjoy. Do take a visit sometime soon!

Fall Letter from Craig

Hello Garden Friends,
Boy, the Fall season just blew by this year! We have been super busy in the gardens and in the design studio. Much bulb planting and closings have been finishing up these past weeks. And with the El Niño weather sure showing us to not anticipate winter too soon… it’s been so hard to try to figure out when a foot of snow is to arrive one day and be gone the next.

We are all so thankful for another great year at CBLD. We received a nice Thanksgiving message I think would be nice to share with you:

Summer Letter from Craig

Dear Gardening Friends,
This summer has been anything BUT hot and humid and all of our garden families, flora and fauna, are loving it! In fact just last week we had a run of hot temperatures and no rain and the “Jurassic” growth from spring on so many leafy plants just couldn’t believe their leaves! Don’t forget to switch on your irrigation system or lug that hose around the yard. The extra growth that Mother Nature has put on over the course of the last few months will suffer now that the continuous, weekly rains have ended. Keep that new growth happy and hydrated!

Spring Letter from Craig

Dear Fellow Gardeners,
The time has finally come to announce the end of winter, thank God!

Surviving another very cold, heavily snowy season, our garden plants continually amaze me as they stoically withstand whatever is thrown at them. We, along with a selection of other migratory species, have the ability to ” breakup” the winter with a change of locale and temperature. Our dear flora, unless lucky enough to grow in a pot in a warm home for the winter, have to deal directly with all of the obvious changes in our climate; from the hottest to the coldest, the most humid to the most desiccating. Oh, the pleasures of gardening in the Midwest!

Winter Letter from Craig

Let’s take us back to last December. The anticipation of a bleak winter forecast was actually superseded by the reality of a historic bone-chilling end to the 2013 calendar year.

Autumn Letter from Craig

Dear Friends,
The magic of Autumn abounds.