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Chicago Tribune
29-04-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Lake Forest woman fulfilling late husband's wishes with $1.02 million donation to Lake County Forest Preserves
It is to be expected that John and Paula Lillard had many things in common throughout a 70-year marriage. That long list included a lifelong love affair with the outdoors. 'We always felt that nature was really important for people to thrive and for the joy of life,' Paula remembered. Now acting on one of John's stated wishes before his January 2024 death, Paula Lillard is donating $1.02 million to the Preservation Foundation, the Lake County Forest Preserves charitable organization. 'It is to honor John and his commitment and his vision,' she said. According to a statement, the donated funds will launch an endowment that will be managed by the Foundation. The endowment's funds will treat open lands at the Lake Forest Middlefork Savannah, Lake Bluff's Oriole Grove Forest Preserve and other adjacent areas overseen by the Lake Forest Open Lands Association (LFOLA). Specifically, the funds will be targeted to eradicate invasive species, prescribed burning and re-planting of trees and native plants. Building off the Lillard donation, the Foundation's Every Acre Strong campaign will look to raise $20 million for the endowment. 'Our 100-year vision for Lake County looks beyond the borders of the forest preserves. It calls on all landowners to work together to keep our natural areas healthy and resilient,' Forest Preserves President Jessica Vealitzek said in a statement. 'Paula's gift brings that vision to life.' Both born in Ohio, the Lillards each spent large portions of their childhood in the outdoors near woods and animals, Paula recalled. 'Understanding the importance of being out in nature was something we grew up with,' she said. That passion continued when they moved to Lake Forest in the early 1970s. She recalled John was often out on the nearby Middlefork Savanna, determined to improve the aesthetics of the land. 'My husband would go out with a chainsaw and try to cut things down, and so it looks quite different today,' she said. 'It looks quite beautiful.' John, the co-founder of the Wintrust Financial Corporation, channeled that love of nature in many areas, eventually becoming the President and Life Director of the LFOLA. As she recalls her life with John, Paula Lillard believes the creation of the endowment will achieve the couple's environmental goals. 'The preservation of this land and these trails is for future generations,' she said. 'We want this land to be here forever. It is not going to be here forever if you don't manage it and if you don't make sure that it is not being encroached upon by asphalt and all kinds of things that interfere with nature.' Paula, who has children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, cites other positive attributes of being outside. She states her concerns of too much screen time for modern youth. 'That is not going to be able to sustain them throughout life,' she said. 'What does sustain us is when we are part of nature.'
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Yahoo
Palm Beach hidden gem offers a nature escape at the center of Midtown
This story is part of our weekly Hidden Gems feature series as the USA TODAY Network – Florida takes readers around the state to highlight some of our most interesting attractions. Nestled in the heart of Palm Beach's historic Midtown neighborhood is a place where Florida's natural ecosystem thrives among a sea of Mediterranean Revival architecture. Pan's Garden, established in 1994 on the campus of the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, encompasses just half an acre, but it is the state's oldest all-native garden and includes 280 species of native plants that showcase Florida's wetland, coastal and upland flora. Like the natural areas of those regions, guest shouldn't expect a perfectly pruned and landscaped garden, foundation horticulturalist Susan Lerner said. 'My philosophy is that people should have an experience of being in nature, and to that end, sometimes they might have to walk around a few leaves, instead of having the clear path for them and their friends,' Lerner said. 'I want people to interact with the garden in subtle and direct ways.' The garden was established in 1994 with the backing of foundation member Lydia Mann, who wanted to create a peaceful place for residents and visitors, where children can learn the joy of nature, Lerner said. Its environment allows plants 'to be themselves' and grow more naturally, though the garden does undergo the occasional trimming and daily weeding. Upon entry, guests are greeted by the garden's namesake, a bronze statue of Pan of Rohallion, the ancient Greek god of the wild, created in 1890 by American sculptor Frederick MacMonnies. Flanking the main entrance of the garden is a sample of Florida's coastline flora, including endangered beach clustervines, known for their wispy vines and star-shaped white flowers, alongside East Coast dune sunflowers and silver palms. At the north end of the garden is the wetland area where bald cypress trees, bamboo-like scouring rush and a mistletoe cactus, named after the small white berries at the end of their stems, surround the garden's water lily-peppered pond. Traveling south from the wetland area is the central pavilion. In a nod to Addison Mizner, the architect credited with popularizing Palm Beach's signature Mediterranean Revival style, the pavilion's roof features Cuban barrel roof tiles created by Reich Metal fabricators, a shop that was once part of Mizner's production team. West of the central pavilion is the historic Casa Apava landscape wall, designed by architect Abram Garfield, son of President James Garfield. The wall was rescued by the Preservation Foundation in 1993, when the former owner of the estate, E.F. 'Bud" Hansen Jr., carved the land into smaller lots. At the southern portion of the garden is the upland area, which features the wildflower walk, an unshaded portion of the garden where plants that need direct sunlight bloom triumphantly. Lining the western edge of the garden are coonties, shrubs with palm-life fronds that are the only cyad native to North America. A prehistoric plant species, cyads are often referred to as living fossils. As an all-native garden, the location is a hot spot for wildlife, with butterflies of all species regularly visiting the garden's flowers. The garden's coonties also are the host plant for the larvae of the atala butterfly, a native species famed for its iridescent black-and-white speckled coloration. Pan's Garden also is among the birdwatching locations listed in Cornell Lab of Ornithology's popular eBird bird sighting database. Throughout the year, birdwatchers can catch a variety of local bird species bathing at the garden's fountains and pond, from the red-headed pileated woodpecker to the ever-chirpy mockingbird, among others. A Cooper's hawk also regularly visits the garden, Lerner said. Just like the island's residents, a hosts of bird species stop at the garden during the winter months, including a pair of mottled ducks that stop by the garden each year. Other migratory bird species seen at the garden include the American redstart, black-and-white warbler, palm warbler and the yellow-throated warbler. As a garden with plenty of shade, Pan's Garden is a great location to stop by throughout the year. Birds visit the garden year-round, though winter offers the best chance to catch a sight of the migratory bird species. Pan's Garden is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Sunday, and requires no admission. It's located at 386 Hibiscus Ave. in Palm Beach. For more information, visit the Pan's Garden page at the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach website at Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Pan's Garden provides nature escape at the center of Palm Beach
New York Times
12-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
Palm Beach Society Goes On, With and Without Trump
Just barely visible in the evening sky on Feb. 28 was an exceptional planetary alignment, with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune all stacked up in a row for the last time until 2040. Far below the celestial conga line, on a slender barrier island on Florida's east coast, another kind of rare spectacle was underway. Many of the world's wealthiest people had gathered in a clear-walled tent for the annual dinner dance hosted by the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach. With so many well-heeled guests in one place, the scene resembled a billionaire mosh pit. There, among the creeping vines and spiked agave plants, stood Robert Wood Johnson IV, the pharmaceuticals heir, owner of the New York Jets and former ambassador to the Court of Saint James. There, the financier Peter Soros was chatting with Pepe and Emilia Fanjul, the Cuban-born couple whose family-owned sugar cane farms sprawl across 190,000 Florida acres and whose annual Christmas card, in the form of a directory, is a foundational document of Palm Beach social life. And there, in a chic white column dress, was Aerin Lauder, the businesswoman whose cousin, William, a former chair of Estée Lauder, recently unloaded two waterfront lots in Palm Beach for nearly $200 million. Unlike those guests whose fortunes had been newly minted in technology, health care, banking, entertainment or logistics, Ms. Lauder came by hers the old-fashioned way. She inherited it. If it is true that the rich are always with us, it is also the case that nowadays they are less often among us. Increasingly, the American superrich glide through their existences in friction-free passage from gated communities to private jets, yachts and island enclaves like this one, a home base for Donald J. Trump since 1985. Palm Beach, mainlanders tend to forget, is an island. Long before the 45th and 47th president had rendered much of it an intermittent high-security zone, its insularity worked itself into the local consciousness. Anyone who visits will inevitably end up on the wrong side of the water when one of the three bascule drawbridges is up. The benefit, a highlight of the social season, took place at Bradley Park, a scruffy public space before the Preservation Foundation gave it a $2.7 million glow-up in 2017. And it provided an unusual opportunity to observe in its natural habitat a subset of the world's 3,000-plus billionaires. Of that number, the 400 wealthiest, according to Forbes, controlled roughly $5.4 trillion in 2024, and at least 58 have homes in Palm Beach. One of these, Julia Koch, has an estimated fortune of $74 billion, making her the second richest woman in the United States. Seven others belonging to this group own major league sports teams. And one is the president. Even before he became a dominant figure in American political life, Mr. Trump was seldom, if ever, to be found at Palm Beach society events, said one of the guests, the designer Steven Stolman. 'In all my years of living and working in Palm Beach, not once did I see Donald Trump shopping in a local store, dining in a restaurant or attending a cultural or charity event outside of his own facilities,' said Mr. Stolman, who lived on the island for three decades before the state's rightward shift sent him packing to Palm Springs in blue-state California. Other guests, who did not want to be quoted by name when discussing the president, said that Palm Beach's old guard had maintained a wary distance from Mr. Trump, at least until he returned to the nation's highest office. Now they have come to accept that he is here to stay. His second administration has led to a notable shift in the tenor of local party chatter. Just as many of the president's critics have gone silent in Washington, members of Palm Beach society said the they have been keeping their thoughts about politics to themselves. Even at private dinners, conversation tends to be cautious and circumspect. It is far safer, instead, to confine social discourse to banter about the various species of Palm Beach resident, from old-money blue bloods to parvenus. To these imperishable topics of idle chitchat, calculating the metrics of wealth has been added as a kind of parlor game. 'The adage always was that you come to Palm Beach thinking you're old and rich,'' said Robin Gillen, a former San Franciscan who relocated to Palm Beach six years ago. 'Then you get here and realize you're neither.' Funny money, after all, is always fun to talk about — all those zeros marching toward googol are so abstract as to seem cartoonish. At least it appeared so at a charity cocktail party for Habitat for Humanity held March 2 on the lawn of La Follia, an Italian Renaissance-style mansion not far from Mar-a-Lago. La Follia is the former home of Terry Allen Kramer, an investment heiress and Broadway producer who, until her death in 2019, was an avid supporter of Mr. Trump and close friend of his wife, Melania. The new owner, the hedge fund billionaire and Republican Party donor Kenneth Griffin, had lent the use of the property to a nonprofit that builds and improves housing for the economically disadvantaged. One such person was Teawanna Teal, a single mother of two who not long ago moved into her own coral-colored Habitat for Humanity home in West Palm Beach. Wearing a floral-patterned dress, Ms. Teal, 34, stood on the baize green lawn among a crowd of people outfitted in patchwork Madras and resort pastels. If the guests were marginally less financially exalted than those at the Preservation Foundation benefit a few nights earlier, they nevertheless exuded an aura of moneyed assurance. It is easy in such a setting to lose sight of the reality that Palm Beach County is in the grip of a housing crisis. Across the bridge the previous morning, scores of homeless people had lined up outside the cyclone fencing around Currie Park in West Palm Beach for a food bank giveaway. The economic distance between Ms. Teal and some of the guests at the Habitat for Humanity benefit — which netted $100,000 — seemed equivalent to the countless miles separating earth from one of those stacked-up planets. But she said she harbored no ill will toward those of the billionaire class. 'To me, this place represents long money — money that makes its own money,' Ms. Teal said. 'I don't look around and think, 'I can never achieve this.' I look around and think: 'This is gold. This is dreams.''
