Category: Gardening

 The Train Lady is opening the doors of her private property tomorrow, June 23rd, to let the public view her amazing train garden railways and she has some exciting new highlights planned for this year. If you’ve never seen her gardens, you do not want to miss this awesome opportunity to experience something really special and only found right here in North Barrington. Train Lady, Elaine Silets, has been hosting tours of her property once a year since 1990, but this year she’ll be introducing us all to some very special guests.
Elaine designs model railroad gardens for a living and your jaw will drop when you see the garden scenes she’s created in her own back yard. It’s 10 luscious acres she calls Gardens at Wandering Tree.
The grounds are covered with gorgeous flowering gardens, laced with miniature tracks and spotted with whimsical model train vignettes.
One of many highlights is the Glorée & Tryumfant Garden Railway, complete with 6,000 square feet of waterfalls, streams, lakes, bridges, trestles, city and country scenes.  And Elaine is raving about her roses this year, “I don’t know what happened to the roses, but I think they got hormones from this weather.  They’re absolutely gorgeous!”
Her gardens are stunning, but one of my kids’ favorite features is Elaine’s train which carries children as passengers and circles around her drive. It’s called “Hogwarts Express” and tomorrow it’ll be the hottest ticket in town!
More details on her gardens in a minute, but first, here’s what’s new this year……