Walsh Makes Waves at Garden Show

As a former personal trainer, member Rick Walsh was in perfect shape for his new profession. Three years ago, he started a Northbrook-based water gardening company, RikRock, a fairly labor-intensive business - and a successful one.

This past March, his company earned the Ace Hardware Water Garden Award for its exhibit at Chicago’s Flower and Garden Show, held a Navy Pier. In 2,500 square feet of space, Walsh and three employees out-built last year’s exhibit. This one incorporated 50 tons of stone and 15,000 gallons of water, two waterfalls, fencing, trees, plants, flowers and several large steel sculptures. He accomplished the feat in three days. “I trained to do this,” he says, adding that the construction schedule demanded about 20 hours of work each day. He admits he’s just now recovering.

Walsh, an imposing figure at more than six feet tall, shaved bald and dressed in denim, stands out against his competitors, and so does his work. Confessing to a passion for art, he has blended his own industrial sculptures into a natural water landscape. A steel abstract lotus plant rises 11 feet above his waterfall and sways when touched. Hanging above this, is a metal sun emitting yellow light, a welcome warmth amid the exhibit hall’s white fluorescent glow. “It’s not tulips and pansies,” Walsh says, referring to the industrial look of his garden. “Putting in the sculpture was terrifying. But I haven’t had one bad comment.”

Sculpting and gardening might appear to be a strange vocation for a man of Walsh’s stature and job history, but the work is not so far from his roots. His family was involved in golf course landscaping, where Walsh learned the trade; yet he wanted to do more. “I couldn’t be like them,” he says. “They didn’t have a great appreciation for art, and I had to work with art.”

It’s been quite a learning process for him since the days on the golf course – he started out building artificial rocks and discovering how lighting and water worked with them, before using real boulders and waterfalls to create a natural look. At next year’s show, he plans to build walk-through waterfalls and a series of themed gardens.

For now, RikRock has received more than its share of press. Walsh’s exhibit is a featured highlight of the Flower and Garden show, and he has been interview on WGN. “Press looks good,” he says. “It gives (your business) validity.”

Media attention, as well as the award, certainly can’t hurt Walsh’s company, and the show traffic has been good to him. He’s happily anticipating the chance to build 54,000-gallon ponds and tackle several new challenges this spring. “If you tell me I can’t, I’ll make it happen. I’ll bring in a 100-foot crane to get a rock over a house.”

Clearly, Walsh loves his work. “I never thought this would be my livelihood,” he says. “Everything I make, I get paid for. It’s pretty neat.”

State of the Union article in April 1999

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