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Garden Walks
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Enjoy Your Visit — WALK THE GARDEN

Early Fall Wows

Early fall is a glorious time to visit the Garden! Not only are the annuals, perennials, vines, trees, and shrubs at the peak of their growth, but each individual garden here has been planted up with extra horticultural “wows,” designed to enhance the plants that are still in bloom, and to share with you the continuing joy plants provide. Don't miss this cool-season tribute to fall color!

Surely the chrysanthemum, aster, and velvety pansy are favorite signature seasonal plants in the Midwest. Valued for their prolonged bloom time and fabulous colors, they breathe new life into garden beds, containers, and hanging baskets — and they will continue to show off even when frost touches the Garden. The welcoming beds at Lake Cook Entrance and Gatehouse are packed with 1,700 richly red mums whose seasonal color will soon be echoed in the surrounding oaks and maples. The overhead hayrack containers above the Greene Bridge will be filled first with cascading Gum Drop mums, a white anemone type with a yellow center, and then in October, Pink Fleece mums will take over the show.

Stone walls on Malott Japanese Garden will feature both cascading Gum Drop and yellow Megumi mums, both anemone types. Heritage Garden contains 15 stunning chrysanthemum obelisks, standing 8 feet tall, stuffed with 250 yellow Pagoda garden mums. Green, square wooden planters of dwarf pampas grass accompany these flowering towers. Framing the Esplanade and enhancing Circle Garden are large pots of giant orange and bronze mum spheres. The coaxing and training to force them to flower in such a variety of habits have taken months of horticultural care.

The Crescent will shine with 2,200 blue, lavender, and purple asters, in gorgeous contrast to autumn's classic tones of burgundy, mustard, and rust. Look for other asters planted in beds or filling out fall containers throughout the Garden. In the triangular entry bed of the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden, an entirely new planting scheme features a delicious assemblage of cool-season color and texture: Liliput Blue Moon aster, a two-toned yellow and purple bloomer, purple Milka aster, and light blue Peter III aster, Redbor kale, Green Deer Tongue lettuce, mustard greens, and pak choi.

It is certainly harvest time on Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden! Hanging baskets have been refreshed with crisp crops of ruffled lettuces and feathery herbs. Don't miss the edible and truly ornamental, red okra, flowering and fruiting at once. Pears and apples are at their prime and the sight of perfect blue green globes of cabbage attracts foodies and photographers alike!

The Circle Garden, dedicated to the beauty and power of annuals, is in top form. Fragrant mounds of silver curry plants beg to be touched, as do the purple black seed heads of Purple Majesty ornamental millet. Lavender-flowering cardoon always gives pause, for its unique resemblance to artichokes, in both flower and fruit, and for its gigantic foliage. Seasonal dahlias and asters add to the nonstop flower show, and the delightful topiary cranes have filled out with creeping fig feathers.

The Bulb Garden has exotic surprises for all. Summer-blooming bulbs are dormant but look what's not — Lime Zinger yautia, Pink Sunburst cannas, pineapple lilies, and red- and green-striped banana plants! A walk through the Home Landscape Gardens reveals full fall bloomers — clematis, sedum, white butterfly bush, purple mistflower, red Siberian burnet, and drifts of 3- to 5-foot, light blue anise-scented sage, PLUS bright new crops of orange pot marigolds in the herb garden with tiny hybrid purple and orange violas popping up everywhere.

Evening Island's sweeping strokes of tone and texture can be admired from across the Great Basin or by walking right through the plants themselves. Grasses, roses, fall-blooming perennials with flowers, cones, and seed heads, plants with giant foliage, and blue, blue asters and bluebeards form rivers of color in constant motion when autumn winds blow. As we think “big, grand, and enduring,” there is no garden or natural area more at its peak in September and October than the Dixon Prairie. Save time for a special autumn walk through time and history in this natural landscape.

Experience thousands of golden moments this season.