Roy Diblik and Northwind Perennial Farm: Thinking Differently About Plants

Northwest Quarterly – Spring 2008 by Janine Pumilia, Managing Editor

Ask Roy Diblik who taught him so much about growing plants, and he'll tell you this: "The plants did. If you can be patient and observant, they'll teach you what you need to know."

It's  this unique relationship with plants that led Diblik from a career in outdoor education to a career in horticulture 30 years ago. "I've always grown a lot of plants, and as I watched other people plant them, kill them, and replace them year after year, I began to feel sorry for the plants. So here I am.”

Apparently the plants were good teachers. Diblik's list of planting achievements is long. He grew and installed 15,000 plants at the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park in Chicago; he designed and installed a 5,000-plant perennial garden for the entrance to Grand Geneva Resort in Lake Geneva, Wis. He designed and installed a prairie style garden around the Frank Lloyd Wright-style Lake Geneva Public Library. He has designed and planted private gardens on many of the estates that surround Geneva Lake.

Currently,  Diblik is working with civic groups and volunteers to plant and maintain perennials along Highway 50 near Delavan, Wis. "We determined it will take 85 hours of maintenance each year. The local Master Gardeners are willing to care for it in the summer, and the local park district will do the fall clean-up. I think it's great to involve as many people as possible to share in the responsibility of gardens," he says of the project. "The important thing is to be realistic about the maintenance you can support before you plant a garden."

Diblik has no formal horticultural training and is glad that he doesn't. "I think that actually allowed me the freedom to think differently about plants and all the possibilities they have to offer," he says, "to think of them as nature does, not humans do.”

For example, he says, take the common rudbeckia, such as coneflower or black-eyed Susan,  a lovely flowering perennial native to both Illinois and Wisconsin. “In nature, you never see a rudbeckia in a mass with 200 other rudbeckias. They live in diverse communities of plants, not in big groupings of one kind of plant. When they live in big groupings, they're far more - susceptible to being wiped out by disease, for one thing."

As many European landscapers do, Diblik assembles communities of "like-minded" plants that enjoy the same soil, light and drainage conditions. He resists planting large drifts of one brightly-colored plant, as is commonly done in the United States. He considers such drifts to be monotonous and unnatural.

Diblik is known for his experimentation with propagation and planting methods. At present, he's working on a project to plant stylized gardens along the Kennedy Expressway near Chicago that can be cut down with mulching mowers each fall. Plant material would be left on the ground to provide nutrients for next year's gardens. "Why not?" he asks. "We cut most perennials back to four inches tall each fall, anyway. It's a matter of developing the right plant community for the space."

Diblik considers his public projects to be a teaching example, proving you can't take the outdoor education teacher out of the horticulturist altogether.

"Our thinking is that, by designing public spaces, people can be exposed to a new way of thinking about plants and what they do for us," he says. "They can learn about plants that mostly take care of themselves; people can learn to plant gardens that require only the amount of maintenance time they honestly can give. It's important that gardening is a joy, not a burden."

To that end, Diblik has developed a "Know Maintenance" program that teaches home gardeners how to plant gardens they can truly manage. "We all have full lives," he says. "It's important that we be honest with ourselves about the amount of time we can commit to maintaining a garden." Diblik has developed a "grid" system of gardening that allows buyers to purchase a plant community that matches not only the appropriate space, light and soil conditions, but also the amount of time a gardener can give to it. In his signature unique style, Diblik names the plant combinations after paintings he has pondered at the Art Institute of Chicago. "I just sat looking at the paintings and their color combinations. One of my collections is called· 'The Monet,' for example."

Diblik's gardening "home" is Northwind Perennial Farm, 7047 Hospital Road, Burlington, Wis., a lovely 10-acre site that he established in 1991, along with two friends/business partners. Northwind grows and sells hardy field-grown perennials, native plants, ornamental grasses, shrub roses and garden accents. It also offers landscape design and installation services. Colleen Garrigan selects the unique fountains, planters, wrought iron pieces and other garden art sold at Northwind's garden shop and displayed throughout the property. "Colleen brings the charm to Northwind, and it shows everywhere, from the placement of benches to the smallest details," says Diblik. "She also has a respect for the vintage heritage of the farm that really comes through because of her work."

Steve Coster runs the landscape  design and installation division and has installed the stone pathways, retaining walls and other hardscape elements found throughout the winding pathways of Northwind. "Steve uses all natural materials and uses different ones so that visitors can see how they compare to one another - for example, cobblestone paths versus fieldstone paths,” says Diblik. Coster also constructs dramatic garden accent pieces from rock, such as freestanding rock spheres and pyramids.

“Our talents complement each other, which is what makes Northwind so unique,” says Diblik. Northwind is tucked into the lush hills of southeastern Wisconsin, not far from Lake Geneva, and offers visitors an opportunity to observe many unique plants and shrubs growing, in communities throughout the farm. Growing diverse communities of plants is good for the gardener and good for the plants, Diblik reasons. It makes the planting areas more predictable, more cost efficient over time, less susceptible to fatal disease and easier to manager. It also produces particularly serene and soothing spaces.

Diblik believes home gardeners often spend too much time and money on fad plants that are not well-suited to our region. “Budget your money and realize that very often greenhouses and nurseries are out to sell you as many plants as possible,” he says. “A spontaneous buy is enjoyable but don’t get caught up in thinking your garden can only be beautiful if it has the latest, highly-promoted plants.”

“Plan your purchases according to your needs, much as you would do for a special meal, he says. "Choose plants in  a thoughtful way - just like you choose what to eat or what to wear. Get to know the plants and what makes them happy. Learn about their structure, textures, and growth habits. Learn as you go and live with what you know."

When new gardeners complain that this approach sounds too limiting, Diblik tells them: "Well, we only have 26 letters in our alphabet, but we manage to arrange them in an awful lot of interesting ways."

The important thing is to grow a garden that is pleasing to you as an individual. "It's all about who you are and where you want to be,” he says.

Keeping a plant journal is a good idea for any gardener, since it’s easy to forget what happened from one week to the next. Diblik encourages beginners to start out with very forgiving “buddy plants” that “take real effort to kill.” For people who love looking at gardens but have no time or desire for the maintenance, Diblik suggests shrub gardens. "They can be really beautiful to look at and require very little care. We'll teach you when and how to prune."

In fact, the owners of Northwind Perennial Farm encourage gardeners to contact them with questions about any sort of plant. The owners would like to see more gardeners succeed and fewer plants die of abuse and neglect.

"The plants run the show," says Diblik. "They grow on their own; they bloom on their own; you can't make them do anything.· You fit yourself into their picture. I like that."