Humans of Schiller Park: Shawn and Vickie Hay

When Ann Lilly asked Shawn and Vickie Hay to help care for a garden in Schiller Park, they said yes, without hesitation.

They had known her for decades. They had worked on her properties, become her friends, and understood how much the park meant to her. When Grace’s Garden needed attention, she knew who to call.

For Shawn and Vickie, it was also a chance to care for a place that had helped raise their family.

Both grew up nearby. High school sweethearts who have now been married for 47 years, they raised their four children a couple of blocks from the park, bringing them over to play just as they had played here themselves. All four attended Stewart Elementary. Their landscaping business, which they started in 1989, became another way to put down roots in the neighborhood. Literally!

Over the years, clients became friends. Work became personal. And Schiller Park remained woven into their everyday lives.

“We’re part of it,” Vickie said. “It’s part of us.”

Today, the couple cares for Grace’s Garden and the planting bed surrounding the Schiller monument. Fellow landscaper Paul Soehnlen continues to work in the park and help oversee its care, while Shawn and Vickie devote their attention to this familiar corner.

As they began helping with the garden, Vickie saw an opportunity to add more color among its hostas and other shade plants.

“I’m a flower girl, Ann,” she remembers telling her.

Ann welcomed the idea. Among the hostas, ferns and other shade plants, Vickie added flowers and groups of coral bells, whose leaves bring a pop of red to the garden.

Planting is Vickie’s favorite part: choosing something, finding its place, and watching the work pay off. But much of what keeps the garden beautiful happens between those additions.

Spring brings mulching, fertilizing and trimming. Through summer, they pull weeds, prune and clear the sticks and debris that fall from the mature trees overhead. In autumn, they cut back the plants that need it and prepare the beds for winter.

Ann understood the importance of that ongoing care. Since her passing, tending the gardens has become a way for Shawn and Vickie to stay connected to her.

The work is familiar to a couple who has spent decades working side by side. Shawn has traditionally been the tree guy; Vickie gravitates toward the flower beds. When planting together, he digs the holes and she backfills. Their children worked alongside them through high school, college and summer breaks. This year, it’s just the two of them.

They now live in Mount Vernon, where they have gardens of their own. As they look toward semi-retirement, they want more time at home, more time with their grandchildren, and opportunities to visit other gardens while they can still comfortably explore them.

But their plans still include Schiller Park.

They intend to keep caring for both beds, returning to the neighborhood where they grew up, raised their children and built a life together.

In the shade of Grace’s Garden, beside the Umbrella Girl fountain, that connection is still something they can tend.

The Friends of Schiller Park are deeply grateful to Shawn and Vickie for giving the park what they’ve given this neighborhood for decades: care, color and roots that run deep.