Artist finds his wildflowers are growing on Chicago

A few, such as the Texas Highway Department, which has been at it since before the Great Depression, have recently tried growing or transferring wildflowers by mowing them when seeds have set and moving the mulch to new areas.

The chief problem with wildflowers, says Kelley, is that so little is yet known about how to grow them. Texas botanist Thomas J. Allen, who has been working with the artist on the Chicago project, confirms that fewer than 200 of the 25,000 native plants in this country have been researched to any degree.

Unlike cotton or corn, wildflowers have had no natural producer or user groups to finance such investigations, he says. It is one reason, in his view, that some people consider any wildflower that is not in bloom a weed. ``I prefer to think of a weed as a plant whose virtues have not been discovered,'' he says.

Lack of appreciation for and information on wildflowers was a factor in Lady Bird Johnson's decision to help launch the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, Texas, in December 1982.

Kelley, a trustee of the center until his term recently expired, says he first got interested in growing wildflowers as art while serving as consultant to a number of art collectors in the 1970s.

In the course of flying with these collectors on short trips in private planes, he noticed the similarity of white concrete airport roadways and runways to the borders of his paintings. He says he could visualize how much better the interior would look with colorful wildflowers than with grass.

Rather than wait for the Chicago Park District to finance his ``Wildflower Works I,'' Kelley opted to finance the project himself as his gift to the city. He figures it will cost him at least $1 million. Although some people question why anyone would spend his own money, Kelley insists that not everyone who has the means necessarily wants to move to the Bahamas.

``Some of us really want to leave the world a better place than we found it,'' he says. And he hopes it will lead to similar projects financed by others, although he is well aware of the risks involved.

``It won't be easy. It won't be fast. And it certainly won't be cheap.'' Indeed, he expects to devote the next 8 to 10 years to making his ``Wildflower Works'' work. He will take out those plants that crowd others or fare less well, and put others in.

``It's a real apple-pie-and-motherhood project,'' agrees Mr. Nyburg, a retired Navy captain, who first visited the Chicago park last fall to check out the ``strange things'' going on in his front yard. He is now one of Kelley's most faithful volunteers.

Nyburg circles the painting every morning to record new blooms, look in on a mallard nest, and check the progress ladybugs have been making against aphids on the Missouri primrose.

The artist, too, spends much of his days checking on the painting's progress. But like Monet at his garden in Giverny, France, Kelley cannot resist trying to capture some of the beauty -- like the clump of bright orange poppies now in full bloom -- on a traditional canvas.

``I'm not going to stop painting -- that's my livelihood,'' he says. ``But I don't have to go to the country anymore.''

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