Sunday, August 30, 2015
By William Hageman
Chicago Tribune (TNS)
CHICAGO
If you visit the Gardens at Ball, on the grounds of Ball Horticultural Co. in West Chicago, you can assume there will be some eye-openers.
This is where, after all, the 110-year-old company researches, tests, markets and displays its products and where retailers and landscapers come to learn about new plants and get ideas.
So if you get the opportunity to tour the gardens, you expect surprises.
Like the Whopper begonia.
“They’ll get to be two and a half feet tall by the end of summer,” says Susan Schmitz, Ball’s trials and education manager. “They’ll be covered with flowers. And you don’t have to do a thing with them.”
Although there are a few days a year when the public can see the Gardens at Ball, it’s first and foremost corporate real estate. The idea is to bring out their professional customers and show them what plants they can grow over the winter and have available the next year.
The property may not be a formal garden, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful.
“Because we’re not a public garden, we don’t do a lot of maintenance,” Schmitz says. “We don’t do a lot of dead-heading; we don’t use pesticides; we do just minimal weeding, by hand. We want [people] to see how the plants do on their own.”
And they do quite well.
There are displays and beds everywhere that will stop visitors in their tracks.
“A lot of the varieties take seven to 15 years to produce, from breeding to trialing to production,” says Ball spokeswoman Katie Rotella. “It doesn’t happen overnight. A lot of our breeders know what’s coming out in 2020. So [visitors] can get a taste in our gardens.”
highlights
Here are a few of the highlights:
Large beds of echinaceas, highlighted by the brilliantly colored Cheyenne Spirit, a 2013 All-America Selections (AAS) award winner, as well as the PowWow and Sombrero varieties.
Spotted around the property are groupings of Jolt dianthus, in cherry and pink, the latter a 2015 AAS winner.
Vertical walls provide color-combination ideas for landscapers as well as home gardeners.
Another captivating new flower is the Night Sky petunia, a dark blue/purple flower with tiny white, starlike speckles. Ball has it displayed in hanging baskets. It could be coming to a garden center near you in a year or two.
Ball’s Wave tunnel features three colors of cascading petunias that surround a person with beauty.
A winding path takes visitors to the top of a small hill, added 10 years ago as part of Ball’s 100th anniversary celebration. There are 38 containers built into the hill, each emphasizing a different color. Once you reach the top of the hill, soak up a beautiful overview of the grounds.
The Skyframe Garden consists of 17 overhead arbors along a path, each with four containers of colorful flowers.
For those who want to get out of the sun, the largest garden on the property is the Woodlands, with impatiens, coleus and other shade lovers among the trees.
Gardeners skittish about impatiens because of the downy mildew epidemic will be pleased to see large beds of resistant and brilliant New Guinea impatiens, including many experimental varieties.
There are three large container gardens where plants are grouped by characteristics: pollinator-friendly, durability, color, ability to tolerate neglect and so on.
Visit www.ballhort.com (click on the link “The Gardens at Ball”) for an interactive map and dozens of photos of each of its gardens.