PROJECT BUDBURST

Project BudBurst is a nationwide initiative that uses citizen scientist observers to track climate change by recording the leafing and flowering of flora across the United States.

PLANTS OF CONCERN

This Garden program engages citizen scientists to monitor the Chicago Wilderness region’s rarest plants, assess trends in their populations, and provide important data used to conserve our rapidly declining floral heritage.

SEEDS OF SUCCESS

This Garden program collects, conserves, and develops native plant materials for stabilizing, rehabilitating, and restoring lands in the United States.

vPlants Virtual Herbarium

vPlants is an online, searchable database that provides free plant specimen data and digital images of specimens.

Echinacea Study

The once-vast prairie has been reduced to small, isolated patches. How long will remnant populations exist, and how can they be conserved? Follow Garden scientists who are working to answer these questions by studying the narrow-leaved purple coneflower (Echinacea angustifolia).

Chicago Wilderness

The Garden’s partner, Chicago Wilderness, is an alliance of organizations that champions biodiversity and its contribution to the quality of life in the urban, suburban, and rural areas of the Chicago Metropolitan region.

ChicagoLAND GROWS®

Chicagoland Grows® is an innovative plant introduction program developed to promote the use of new plant cultivars that are well-adapted to the growing conditions of the Upper Midwest. While regional in focus, the program’s plants can be grown successfully in all zone-appropriate regions of North America, Europe and around the world. Chicagoland Grows® is a corporate partnership among the Chicago Botanic Garden, the Morton Arboretum and the Ornamental Grower’s Association of Northern Illinois (OGA), a network of wholesale nurseries located in northeastern Illinois.

Invasive Plant Management Workshop

The 2010 Invasive Plant Management Workshop, organized by the Lake County Forest Preserve District and hosted by the Chicago Botanic Garden, provided attendees an opportunity to learn about invasive plant management strategies that are being implemented within the Chicago Region. Species covered included those that are already locally widespread as well as those that are just beginning to spread into the region. Special attention was given to chemical control strategies, both alone and in combination with other management approaches. Several speakers also discussed innovative tools and equipment that are being developed for management of invasive plants.

Northeast Illinois Invasive Plant Partnership

The Northeast Illinois Invasive Plant Partnership (NIIPP) is a cooperative weed management area (CWMA), a regional organization that brings together all interested landowners, land managers (private, city, county, state, and federal), non-profits, private entities, industry, special districts, and the public in the defined geographic boundaries of the Chicago Wilderness region for the purpose of coordinating and combining their resources, expertise, and activities for more efficient and effective management of invasive plant species across jurisdictional boundaries.