MBA’s Beautification Award Winners

The Macomb Beautiful Association’s coveted Beautification Awards have been announced for 2026. Twenty-four residential and business properties were nominated and voted on by members of Macomb Beautiful Association. Five residences and two businesses were chosen as outstanding examples of landscaping in front of their properties. The city of Macomb has again proven that we live, work, and play in a beautiful town.

Thomas Cokel and Jamie Moses 310 N. McArthur St

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to enjoy our garden and to the Macomb Beautiful Association for choosing it for this year’s award. We are truly honored by this recognition and grateful for the opportunity to share a little piece of our gardening journey with our community.

Our journey began several years ago when we started renovating the landscape around our home. It really gained momentum when we acquired vacant property on the other side of our driveway at 222 W. Calhoun Street. We quickly named the garden “Esther’s Garden,” in honor of Tom’s mother, and began filling it with one of Esther’s favorite flowers—roses.

As the garden grew, so did our vision. We wanted to create a beautiful space that would not only bring us joy but also benefit the community and local wildlife. One of our goals was to create a waystation for monarch butterflies and other pollinators, providing a welcoming place for them to rest, feed, and thrive.

Brenda and Chris Hance 435 W. Chase St

One of the main reasons Brenda gardens is to get exercise but with beautiful rewards. Being in a wheelchair, she needed a creative way to stay active. She started gardening partly for that reason, though she has always loved flowers, and got more and more interested in collecting plants and creating an environment for pollinators and other wildlife.

Brenda discovered that a big gardening reward is the way more butterflies, hummingbirds and bees are drawn to her yard. She does, however, get a lot of deer interaction and they often eat more than their share. Finding plants that are less desirable to them, while also planting things they are intended to eat, like lettuce, seems to help.

Chris is a valuable resource when she needs ‘heavy lifting, ‘deep reaching’, or a trip to the greenhouse. Though it looks wild, she plans during the winter months as she tries to create a meadow/cottage style effect for the yard. As an artist, she tries to plan color interaction and heights, changes in season and such. But gardens sometimes seem to have a mind of their own and she must decide where to make changes and add, subtract or divide. Her grandmother was a flower gardener and many of her choices in the garden are influenced by memories of her.

She also enjoys the fact that people walk and drive by the garden to enjoy it. It is a way to give to the community, as well. The wonderful thing about gardening is the connections we make with nature, community and ourselves.

Margie and Bill Carle 833 S. Lafayette St

At 833 S. Lafayette Street, nestled between the Kiljordin Creek and the Everly House, sits Bill and Margie Carle’s Forever home. Built in 2000, Margie describes it as a home that embodies love and family.

Framed by 5 varieties of hydrangeas, 2 varieties of the Japanese Maple, lilacs, mini salsa barberry bushes, and white and purple-pink clematis climbing an arbor. These are accented by black planters filled with shades of pink Supertunias, verbena, and geraniums across the front and on the porch. Other black planters hold coleus and inpatients. The red front door is guarded by Boston ferns.

The rest of the property has five other varieties of hydrangeas, hostas, helleboras, rose bushes, peonies, iris, hardy geraniums, Autumn Joy sedum, daylilies, Japanese Painted ferns, mini salsa and mini citrus barberry bushes and Karl Foerster ornamental grass.

The Carle’s flower beds are constantly evolving. As testimony, they will be adding another hydrangea and a hardy hibiscus this fall.

Barbara and Rodger Bainter 614 N. Pearl St

Rodger and Barb moved to their N. Pearl St. bungalow nearly 24 years ago with a bare lawn and clean palette. They started with a small selection of host plants which evolved into a display of various flowering perennials including coneflowers, black eyed Susans, wild geraniums, columbine, and lavender. The ferns on the front porch help to finish the overall display.

Several plants have been given to them and were randomly placed throughout the yard. Over the years, they have tried to grow marigolds which didn’t seem to do well, but zinnias and petunias are the two annuals that are thriving in the front and the back yards. Fortunately, the perennials have multiplied and increased the size of the gardens without more planting. They are trying to keep their gardens as carefree and low maintenance as possible as they enjoy their golden years.

Lisa Morrow and Dale Sobatka 635 Memorial Dr Dale Sobatka and Lisa Morrow purchased their house in 2014 when they moved from Pittsburgh to Macomb. The front yard trees are Red Oak, Magnolia and White Bud. A very old Rhododendron at the north edge blooms fuchsia red in the spring. The front garden bed is a mix of perennials and annuals.

Many of the perennials were in the garden bed when they purchased the house (Daffodils, Tulips, Tiger Lillies, Spirea, Lillies of the Valley, Iris, Lambs Ear). They added into the mix Azaleas, Butterfly Bush, Roses, a yellow tree Peony, Day Lillies, Clematis Vine and Cone Flowers.

They also searched for miniature Ginkgo Bushes, which were finally found at Hornbaker Gardens. Annuals are added every spring and vary from year to year (Lantana, Zinnias, Marigolds, Petunias, Snapdragons, Cosmos). Their preferred ground cover around the plants is cocoa mulch. It is difficult to find in the area, so when Lisa and Dale visit Pittsburgh they bring back 6-8 bags of Hershey Cocoa Mulch. The front bed also has a few garden statuaries. Copper solar lights in the front bed and copper flowers in the planters were handmade and purchased in Tubac, Arizona. Don Mathis and Charles Combite built the corner fence in the back yard to allow for a trellis type design. Fencing between the posts are Hog Panels and the posts were covered with aluminum window sheets to match the house. Lisa and Dale chose porcelain vine - which trails over the entire fence (white flowers bloom in the spring). In front of the fence are 2 buckeye bushes (a gift from Rick Fox). The two other planted areas in the back have brick edging and perennial plantings. Close to the house are Hosta, Rhododendron, Japanese Maple, Lilyturf and Solomon Seal.

The driveway side perennials are Spirea and Barberry.

MACOMB BEAUTIFUL BUSINESS/COMMUNITY AWARD

General Macomb Chapter of NSDAR Never Forget Garden-221 W. Washington St DAR member Connie Mohr, visited a similar Never Forget Garden in Arizona, done by a local DAR Chapter. She brought the idea to Sarah Curtis, the Regent of General Macomb Chapter DAR at that time.

She was encouraging, but we could not find a suitable site. With the help of Tina Belz, the American Legion offered us a space at their flagpole.

Their assistance made this garden possible. Plans were drawn up, presented at a meeting of DAR and the resolution passed. These members volunteered to be on the Garden committee; Regent, Eileen Worthington, Karen Schneider, Ketra Wanamaker, Saralee Moore, Tina Belz, Sarah Curtis, and Connie Mohr. Money for this project was generously donated by the Nancy Standly estate and a grant from the Illinois State DAR Regent (2025) Project.

First, we removed the sod, tilled, and amended the soil all with the help of friends, members, and spouses who generously donated their time. The gray brick pavers for edging were donated and installed by Tina and Marty Belz. On July 13, 2025, the committee members planted a garden of some purchased and some donated flowers.

They are mainly, Red, White, and Blue. The back row is Bobo Hydrangeas, followed by Red Monarda, and a row of Blue Veronica. We also planted some yellow day lilies for a border. There are some red day lilies around the front on either side of the plaque from the Society of the Honor Guard, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The plaque is mounted on a facsimile of a tomb stone like those in Arlington National Cemetery, made and donated by Ronnie Curtis.

The local chapter of the DAR will continue to maintain this beautiful garden for everyone to enjoy.

iDOC Device Repair 1277 Hemp St iDoc Device Repair opened the doors of our Hemp Street facility in 2024. From this building, our team repairs all types of consumer electronics for the education and enterprise spaces, serving school districts and businesses across the nation. We are also here for our neighbors, handling everyday device repairs for the Macomb community as the only organization of our kind in the area — keeping technology working and in the hands of the people who depend on it.

Our building sits in Macomb’s industrial park, and that made the landscaping matter even more to us.

An industrial park doesn’t have to feel industrial. We wanted our employees to pull in every morning to a place that looks cared for, and we wanted every visitor’s first impression of iDoc to be a welcoming one.

To get it right, we turned to a Macomb institution: Wally Elsner and the team at Elsner’s Midwest Ornamental Nursery. They designed and planted the beds that frame the front of the building — roses and hydrangeas that carry color from late spring through summer, anchored by a pair of large arborvitaes that keep the entrance green and full all year long, all set in clean, well-kept mulch beds.

We’re proud to call Macomb home. Much of our work is repairing the devices students learn on every day, so it only feels right that our own front door reflects the same care.