All posts related to the Gardens & Grounds
Category: Gardens & Grounds
Eight Times Better
Another Cantigny “garden room” has reopened following extensive renovation. This month we welcome back the Octagon Garden, a space named for its geometric shape and cherished for its ever-changing seasonal beauty. The garden has always had eight sides, but it...
5 Questions: Q&A with Matt Langan
Matt Langan is in his twelfth year with the Boston office of Sasaki Associates, a planning and design firm with international operations. In 2014, Cantigny retained Sasaki to develop a property “master plan” that became Project New Leaf. As a...
A Rocky Debut
Cantigny Park visitors will soon experience a garden within the gardens that is entirely new: a Rock Garden unlike any other in the Midwest. Located just east of the Visitors Center and south of the new Fountain Garden, the Rock...
5 Questions: Q&A with Chris Pieters
It would be easy to bestow pity upon Chris Pieters, not that he’d ever want it. He joined Cantigny as food and beverage director in May 2017, just as Project New Leaf was getting under way. The project has made...
Project Update, Summer 2020
Summer at the park is not what we pictured just a few months ago. COVID-19 has changed our daily operations in so many ways. We’re happy to be open again on a limited basis but we miss not being able...
Aqua Show!
Throughout Project New Leaf, one of the most anticipated elements has been the new fountain, the crown jewel and centerpiece of the gardens located east of the Cantigny Visitors Center. The Fountain Garden is also among the first Phase II...
5 Questions: Q&A with Todd Henderson
Project New Leaf, as we learned in the previous “5 Questions” with Joe Hibbard, began in 2014. But that was on paper. The physical work began in 2017, and among the very first actions was the draining of Gold Pond....
5 Questions: Q&A with Joe Hibbard
Joe Hibbard is a landscape architect with the Boston office of Sasaki Associates, a planning and design firm with international operations. In 2014, Cantigny retained Sasaki to develop a property “master plan” that became Project New Leaf. Hibbard’s expertise in...
Renewing the McCormick Allée
In the 1930s, when Robert R. McCormick expanded his Cantigny home with spacious east and west wings, he applied an equally grand idea to the mansion’s southern landscape. An avenue or “allée” was planted: two parallel rows of American Elms...
5 Questions: Q&A with Scott Witte
Scott Witte became director of horticulture at Cantigny Park in 2018, one year after Project New Leaf began. He was previously director of agronomy (superintendent) at Cantigny Golf, where he served 23 years. Witte holds a bachelor’s degree in Crop...