Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/138854
Landscape architect Craig Bergmann's style ranges from proper English gardens to green roofs. Haute Property NEWS, STARS, AND TRENDS IN REAL ESTATE the transformers MAKING FALLOW EARTH VERDANT IS SECOND NATURE TO THESE STAR LANDSCAPE DESIGNERS. BY LISA SKOLNIK A lexander McQueen famously said, "There is no better designer than nature." True, but gracious living in your own backyard—the kind that satisfies the soul and piques senses of sight and smell— calls for intervention. These three local landscape mavens are from different walks of the gardening world and have mastered the art of transforming barren lots into lush landscapes. PHOTOGRAPHY BY LINDA OYAMA BRYAN The Plant-Smith: Craig Bergmann "The first thing I do is meet a site and the people who own it to gauge our chemistry and the potential of the land," says landscape architect Craig Bergmann, who made his first introduction to gardening at age 5. That's when his dad, a passionate hobby gardener, gave him a plot behind their Glen Ellyn home and started teaching him everything he knew. By the time Bergmann went to DePaul University, he was hooked. He majored in biology and worked at a local floral shop part-time. At graduation in 1981, he turned down a job offer with the prestigious National Aquarium in Baltimore to stay at the shop and work his topsoil plot in a vacant lot that he shared with a mentor who was a landscape contractor. The house he bought at that time with his partner in Wilmette kick-started his career: The garden he forged there led to so many requests for his services that Bergmann left the floral shop and started his namesake firm at 23. Today, he has a thriving practice out of the historic David Adler –designed A. Watson Armour Estate in Lake Forest and a 25-acre nursery in Wadsworth. "I'm very lucky to have my avocation be my vocation," he says. He also respectfully credits the continued on page 134 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 133-136_MA_HP_Opener_SUMMER13_V2.indd 133 133 6/18/13 5:48 PM