A GARDEN PARTY IN CHICAGO by Anna Henderson, Office of Institutional Advancement
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here may be nothing so rare as a day in June, but September proved itself as fair for the 25 Chicago-area alumnae who joined Posy Krehbiel, ’60, for an evening garden walk at her home in Lake Forest, Illinois. Alumnae in attendance represented classes from 1936 through 1995. Mills College President Janet Holmgren spoke about academic program expansions and other College successes. As a precursor to Mills Sesquicentennial Anniversary celebrations in the Midwest, Posy invited fellow Mills women to tour her nine-acre garden, much of which she has restored to the original, decoera vision of landscape designer Rose Standish Nichols. The grounds are divided into elegant and surprising garden rooms that give way to a sweeping lawn and bold walled gardens created by Posy in 1998. Well-known Chicago philanthropists, Posy and her husband, John Krehbiel, open their home for cultural and philanthropic projects throughout the summer. Architecture buffs are especially interested in the Krehbiel’s home, designed in 1904 for department store magnate John T. Pirie by Benjamin Marshall, the architect who designed Chicago’s famous Drake Hotel.
Top: Vivian Schwartz Leith, ’55, (left), Posy Love Krehbiel, ’60, Sandra Tempel Noble, ’63, and Elizabeth Mueller, ’95, in Posy Krehbiel’s garden in September. Above: Ann Sulzberger Wolff, ’42, and Caryl Hollender Susman, ’52, enjoying a September evening in Posy Krehbiel’s garden.
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