Explore the Garden
• Aquatic Garden
• Bonsai Collection
• Bulb Garden
• Children's Growing
Garden
• Circle Garden
• The Crescent
• Dwarf Conifer Garden
• Enabling Garden
• English Oak Meadow
• English Walled Garden
• Esplanade
• Evening Island
• Fruit & Vegetable
Garden
• Gardens of the
Great Basin
• Greenhouses
• Heritage Garden
• Kleinman Family Cove
• Lakeside Gardens
• Landscape Gardens
• Japanese Garden
• McDonald Woods
• Native Plant Garden
• Plant Conservation
Science Center
• Plant Evaluation
Gardens
• Prairie
• Railroad Garden
• Rose Garden
• Sensory Garden
• Skokie River
• Spider Island
• The Trellis Bridge
• Water Gardens
• Waterfall Garden
Explore the Garden
• Staircase entrance
• Accessible-to-all path
• Hillside garden
• Views of Japanese Garden
A Garden volunteer talks about his favorite gardens, including the Dwarf Conifer Garden.
Dwarf Conifer Garden
take a tour
 |
Dwarf and slow-growing conifers in all their colorful, textural beauty are found in this four-season hillside garden.
The Dwarf Conifer Garden showcases more than 150 different kinds of the smaller members of the conifer family.
Conifers are plants that bear cones. Mostly native to the earth’s northern hemisphere, conifers have skinny needlelike or scalelike leaves that help reduce moisture loss and allow snow to be shed easily.
The conifer family includes both the oldest living thing on earth (Pinus aristata, or bristlecone pine, known to reach 4,000+ years old) and the largest (Sequoia sempervirens, or coast redwood, nearly 400 feet tall). Dwarf conifers are trees that do not reach the normal size of what is typical for their species.
The renovation of the Dwarf Conifer Garden has been made possible by a generous gift from Georgiana Taylor, with support from the Woman’s Board of the Chicago Horticultural Society.