Features
The 25 – Craig Bergmann
During his 40-year career in the Chicagoland area, landscape architect Craig Bergmann has become renowned for his intertwining of design, horticulture, and architecture.
“A great residential landscape is a created environment that is appropriate to the site, the architecture of the structures around it, and works for the family that lives there,” Bergmann says. “It reflects the owner’s style and dedication to sustainability, increases awareness of the out of doors, contributes to the neighborhood both aesthetically and naturally, and is designed to only get better with maturity.”
With over four decades of experience working on quality, historic homes in well-established neighborhoods, Bergmann has built a business where people look to him to “know” how to landscape at the level of their home.
Bergmann immersed himself in the natural world at the young age of five. Working alongside his father on a small plot behind their garage, he learned the ways of the garden, which ultimately paved his future path, as he felt he had the ability to do something different from what he was seeing.
After graduating from DePaul University, where he majored in biology, Bergmann turned down an opportunity with the National Aquarium in Baltimore to start a career in gardening and founded his namesake firm at age twenty-three.
Today, he runs his practice out of the historic David Adler-designed,
A. Watson Armour Elawa Farm Estate in Lake Forest, Illinois, and a 25-acre nursery in Wadsworth, Illinois.
“Our team is built on this collaborative spirit, where everyone shares experiences to learn and perfect efforts along the way,” he says. “We are a family of aesthetic and horticultural engineers and practitioners.”
