A Shade Garden in Riverwoods, IL

This home, designed by a student of Frank Lloyd Wright, sits snugly in a wooded lot and is featured in the spring issue of Midwest Gardening Magazine.

These woods were formerly a buckthorn desert.

The buckthorn had to be cleared out and the ecosystem restored.

Here is a detail of some of its new plant life, including an elegant ostrich fern.

Goatsbeard, a shade-loving, shrub-sized plant naturalizes well at the edge of the woods.

Toby admires a goatsbeard plant.

The woods are very wet in spring and can support moisture-loving wildflowers like the cardinal flower at left...

and blue lobelia at right, which flourished even during the severe drought of 2005.

The owner designed and added this rock pile feature...

... a piece of sculpture...

and even a place to play chess - all to add interest to the lot.

The owner enjoying his new landscape.