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It’s the humblest patch of green at the Chicago Botanic Garden, yet the information gathered there has national implications—and, though you may not realize it, it’s part of your daily prep for work, school, and play.

At the Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America, you see model trains chugging charmingly through the trees, mountains, and cityscapes, and clacking across bridges as they merrily toot their horns.

You don’t see the workshop crammed with test tracks, a lathe, a drill press, soldering irons, a drawer filled with spare train motors, dozens of bins of spare parts, and rows of small jars of paint labeled “CNW yellow” and “Wisconsin Central maroon.”

But that’s what keeps the trains rolling at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The secret is out; visitors to the Chicago Botanic Garden have unprecedented access to plant information, guides, and tours through a groundbreaking smartphone app, called GardenGuide. Garden staff and volunteers used their skills and savvy to squeeze interactive maps, audio guides, points of interest, and botanic details on more than 10,000 plants into an application that sits in the palm of your hand. How did they do it, and what keeps the wheels turning?

Boyce Tankersley, director of Living Plant Documentation, takes us on a tour of what’s blooming in the display gardens on the first day of fall.

It’s been another fantastic season at Butterflies & Blooms at the Chicago Botanic Garden. This is my second year working at Butterflies & Blooms, and I think it’s looking better than ever. 

The biggest surprise this year happened this week.

Having recently experienced the magical bloom of our titan arum Alice the Amorphophallus at the Chicago Botanic Garden, we were reminded of the pure joy that plants can bring.

Alice provided special moments for many people—including me.

Once there was a boy who loved model trains. When the boy grew up, he became the chief engineer of train exhibitions at the Chicago Botanic Garden—and he still plays with trains. “I hardly get to play with my railroad at home because I get to play with this one,” said Dave Rodelius, in the tone of a man who can’t believe his good fortune.

Dave Rodelius shows off one of the stars of the Model Railroad Garden this spring: a steam engine!

The Lenhardt Library hosts remarkable exhibitions throughout the year. These exhibitions highlight parts of the collection that visitors might not otherwise see, and the exhibitions are among the Garden’s best-loved secrets! Stacy Stoldt, public services manager of the Lenhardt Library, curated the exhibition, Butterflies in Print: Lepidoptera Defined.

Riley Obenchain conjures a feeling of mischief and magic.

He wears a tattered straw hat, trimmed with a red poppy, that looks like something a scarecrow might wear. His bushy black eyebrows dance when he talks, bringing to mind the woolly bear caterpillars abundant in the fall. A playfulness—tinged with the macabre—also shows in the jack-o-lantern characters Obenchain created for HallowFest, the Garden’s former celebration of Halloween.

While many city dwellers might notice a serious lack of snow some years, winter makes its presence felt at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The first significant snowfall of the season gives the Garden a perfect white coat for winter. What better reason for a walk through the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Japanese Garden?

As proud gardeners, we are thrilled to announce the arrival of flower names as a fresh trend on the best baby name lists. 

While Lily, Rose, and Daisy have been perennial list favorites, Violet has just cracked the top five on Nameberry.

This year, the Chicago Botanic Garden commemorates the 125th anniversary of the Chicago Horticultural Society, which created the Garden and manages it today.

The roots of the Chicago Botanic Garden run deep. Ground was broken in 1965 and the Garden opened in 1972, but its underpinnings can be traced to 1890, when the Chicago Horticultural Society was founded.

Attention orchid fans: our vanilla orchid is blooming in the Tropical Greenhouse at the Chicago Botanic Garden. It’s a rare occurrence in the wild—and in a greenhouse. Wade Wheatley, assistant horticulturist, seized the moment to hand-pollinate the flower. 

Why hand pollinate? In hopes of producing a vanilla bean. Yes, the fruit of a vanilla orchid is used to make pure vanilla extract, which flavors many foods we enjoy.

President’s Day was established in 1885 as a day to celebrate all U.S. presidents past and present. It also seems to be just the right day for me to share the highlights of my visit to the White House with you.

Like many children, I was fascinated with Beatrix Potter, the creator of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. I remember wanting to visit Hill Top Farm, Potter’s home, after finding a photo of children reading by the fireplace in a National Geographic my parents had.

We love nature here at the Chicago Botanic Garden, so we looked to the natural world for inspiration on how to enjoy the eclipse—here at the Garden, or in your own backyard.

On Monday, August 21, 2017, people across the United States witnessed a rare event: the first total solar eclipse to cross over the country from coast to coast in nearly a century.

Step past the sleepy stone lion, breathe in the cowslip primrose, and listen to the water trickle into an eighteenth-century lead cistern—the feeling is as timeless as the tiny thyme plants growing between the hand-pressed bricks. So how do we preserve that timeless feeling while making sure the Helen and Richard Thomas English Walled Garden withstands the rigors of time?

Work is underway to enhance the English Walled Garden’s magestical tapestry.

Early last summer I noticed a small row of books, bracketed by nice-looking bookends, on a shelf behind the front desk at the Lenhardt Library. “Those are our dedication books,” explained Leora Siegel, library director. “If visitors or members would like to pay tribute to someone special or mark a special occasion, they can dedicate a book in the library in the same way that they might dedicate a tree or a bench in other Garden areas.”

We gathered around a table at the Garden View Café the other day to taste something that only one of us had ever tasted before: powdered orchid roots.

A traditional winter drink in the cafés and restaurants of Turkey, salep is made from the tuberous roots of orchids—specifically, terrestrial orchids in the genus Orchis. Dried and powdered, the resulting flour is combined in a drink mix with other ingredients, much as hot chocolate or chai spices would be: sugar, cornstarch, powdered milk, cinnamon, and vanillin (the main flavor component in vanilla) are added.

What does your mental checklist look like when you think “romantic evening”? Does it include picnicking? Flowers? Music? Dancing? Sunsets? Selfies? Walking hand in hand?

A romantic picnic need not be formal or fancy. The secret to making it romantic is a personal touch—something that both reflects your personality and makes the evening more fun. It could be a picnic blanket with a story. It could be real plates/glasses/flatware instead of plastic. It could be a home-cooked meal or an out-of-the-ordinary beverage.

Long-ago legend says that cranes can live for 1,000 years…and that folding 1,000 paper cranes, one for each year, can make a wish come true. 

So it is that the crane is the symbol of longevity and good fortune.

The January issue of National Geographic features articles on two topics dear to me: American’s national parks (I just planned a Grand Canyon/Arches trip for June!), and the power of nature to improve mental health. The latter article cites scientific evidence that nature makes us happier, more productive, nicer to each other, and—critically—more forgiving of ourselves.

Of all the summer evening sights at the Chicago Botanic Garden, only one can compete with the flowers: the brides.

Beautiful in their gowns, stepping delicately into the Krasberg Rose Garden or walking down toward the Smith Fountain at the Esplanade, they trail bridesmaids and tuxedoed men and happy families. As they pass, we onlookers stop in our tracks, smile goofily, gawk unabashedly…and let our thoughts turn to romance.

Of the many Spike-related questions asked by visitors this week, our favorite came from 8-year-old Prairie! In the video below, Prairie wants to know, in essence, if she can transport Spike’s malodorous odor from the Chicago Botanic Garden to her classroom.

Good question, Prairie!

Conservation scientist Dr. Shannon Still has a fascinating response. Dr. Still will attempt to pollinate Spike’s flowers during bloom with pollen shared by our friends from The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, and Denver Botanic Gardens.

In gardening, as in life, patience is a virtue. Twelve years ago, the Garden embarked on a mission to bring a rock star of the plant world to the Chicago Botanic Garden. The titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), also known as the corpse flower, is the largest flowering structure in the world. When it blooms, it puts on a show like no other. 

Pokémon hunting in the Garden can be a great way to stop and take a closer look at some of the gardens while connecting with other visitors. Ordinarily, we love our visitors to enjoy our gardens with their senses, not their phones, but with the new Pokémon GO app, you can do both.

It’s a warm summer evening, and you’re at the Chicago Botanic Garden with someone special. The food’s been great, and the music sounds terrific…time to grab his/her hand and head out for a romantic stroll.

Find the places where the two of you can hear the music across the water, take in a different view, and have a bench all to yourselves. Our top ten hideaways at the Garden:

No rain, then too much rain, then...this is a challenging year for gardening. For those who garden in northeastern Illinois, Here are some tips to keep your garden in shape this summer:

Finally the world of fashion has stumbled on one of our great loves—fungi.

Lately, Vogue magazine and other media have picked on the trend of fungi-inspired fashion and design. Since the global pandemic began, designers have been turning to the earthy aesthetics and healing powers of mushrooms and other kinds of fungi.

After a year of extraordinary challenges, we are looking forward to all that summer 2021 has to offer in the Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden.

April's only full moon is lovely enough, but the upcoming one is a gift from nature—and the perfect time to take a night walk. On Monday, April 26, head outside to see the "pink" supermoon. Whether you prefer to walk in solitude or with family members, don’t miss peak illumination at about 10:30 p.m. Central Daylight Time.

Many of the gardens at the Chicago Botanic Garden may be sleeping this time of year, but our horticulturists definitely are not. They’re hard at work during snowy winters, thinking about all the new plants and planning for the New Year.

We asked a few horticulturists for their gardening resolutions—whether at the Chicago Botanic Garden, or in their own backyard. Feel free to snag one of their ideas for yourself.

Chicago artists have been busy in their studios creating installations with uplifting messages to welcome visitors to the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lightscape.

Matthew Hoffman’s 12-foot-tall sculpture celebrates the word JOY: “the expression of love, comfort, and happiness when we're with the ones we love.”

It has been five months since the Black Lives Matter movement ignited a new civil rights movement and caused the Chicago Botanic Garden to reflect and recommit to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility for our staff, our visitors, our volunteers, and our boards. Part of that process is to take a hard look at the stories the Garden tells about gardens, plants, and people.

An ancient glacier. A swampy marsh. A renowned landscape architect. The Chinese Garden of Perfect Brightness. Tie them together and the result is part of the intriguing back story of the Chicago Botanic Garden—which starts long before the Garden’s groundbreaking in 1965. Next time you visit the Garden, take a closer look at the topography and you can still make out the origins of all that beauty.

“One designs not places, or spaces or things—one designs experiences.”
John O. Simonds, Landscape Architect

Dinosaur snacks and other Garden trivia you should know

We love our Grand Tram Tour drivers—they’ll tell you things that most people (and even Google) don’t know about the Chicago Botanic Garden. Take this quick quiz on just a few of the factoids that the drivers share. We know you’ll ace this (except for maybe the "Making waves..." question; there’s something a bit fishy about it). Need a refresher? Grand Tram Tours are scheduled to run daily through October 11.

Love is in the air...we ❤️ the date nights, meet-cutes, and anniversaries at the Garden—and watching the 50 or so couples who got engaged last year at our holiday event Lightscape. So we got to thinking about romantic spots on our 385 acres and heart-fluttering engagement moments.

I am an enthusiast of space design.

After a two-year technical degree at École Boulle (a school of fine arts and crafts and applied arts in Paris, France), I decided to study for my master’s degree at the National School of Landscape Architecture of Versailles.

For me, work in landscape architecture is the best way to unite many different and interesting fields, such as art, sociology, and ecology. Designing spaces where people will live and have an emotional connection to their surroundings is my way of creating happiness.

How does the natural world affect a community’s health and well-being? Over the course of one year, 16 Chicago high school students from the Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy (IHSCA) sought to find the answer.

In 2017, I spent a lot of time in the Regenstein Center, around the Lenhardt Library's librarian’s suite, Skyping in the Library’s rare book room, training at the circulation desk, and maybe even having lunch in the break room. I’m Alicia Esquivel, and I worked at the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library as a resident on a collaborative project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Thank you, Rachel Carson.

The Victory Garden movement in World War II encouraged a nation of gardens. The results were impressive: 20 million gardens were established, and 40 percent of fruits and vegetables were homegrown.

Gardening is all about embracing change. You plant seeds and wait to see which ones will sprout. You monitor emerging spring buds to mark the time until leaf-out and see which ones were affected by Chicago’s harsh winter. And you watch as the bulbs you planted last fall emerge strongly but are not quite the color you were expecting.

This year, spring at the Chicago Botanic Garden has been all about change, and acceptance of how the COVID-19 health crisis affects how we care for the Garden—and how the Garden will look when we are able to reopen. 

We all remember first learning about haiku in grade school with the familiar pattern of three phrases written in five, seven, and five syllables. As I developed this year’s Words in Bloom: A Year of Haiku program, I learned that the world of haiku is an expansive one with many forms. Designed to be “one breath” poems with a focus on nature, haiku has the power to strike an emotional chord.

Gardens are romantic by nature. That’s why one of our most frequently asked questions is, “What’s the most romantic spot at the Garden?”

So we scoped it out, asked around, and compiled a list of our top ten most romantic spots. Now it’s up to you to…

The Krasberg Rose Garden’s arbor is the perfect place to pause on a romantic stroll.

From the 2015 archives:

It is our pleasure to introduce another titan arum (in bloom!), which we have joyfully named Alice the Amorphophallus. Given the history below, it’s a name to remember!

Alice the Amorphophallus is caught blooming on webcam at 12:22:39 a.m. today—the Semitropical Greenhouse may smell a bit funky this morning.

Can’t make the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? Visit the Helen and Richard Thomas English Walled Garden instead.

In 2017, torrential rains fell over much of our region, particularly in Lake and McHenry counties, as well as southeastern Wisconsin. Here at the Chicago Botanic Garden, high water levels in the Skokie River forced us to close on July 13 and 14—the first time in the Garden’s history that we closed to visitors for two consecutive days. 

So what exactly happened that required us to close? And how did the flooding affect our plants? 

Show of hands: Who’s ready for spring?

We are, too.

Thankfully, the bright, blooming containers in the Heritage Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden were planted this week, welcoming spring and warm fuzzies along with them. Just standing near these spring annuals makes us happy, and for horticulturist Tom Soulsby—who’s been planting these signature troughs for the past 15 years—it’s one of his favorite things to do each spring.

Meditative, artful, and transporting. In a way, the experience of seeing Asia in Bloom: The Orchid Show is much like ikebana, the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging. On display now through March 25, this new feature of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Orchid Show invites you to pause and reflect on this historic art form.

Ikebana is the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging.

In November, I had the unique opportunity to go to the Portland Japanese Garden for a week-long training session—and what a week it was!

The hand-carved Buddha is in the house. A circa-1850 glazed Chinese jar is filled with green Cymbidium orchids native to Asia. And we’re pampering 10,000 other orchids so they’ll be in full flower for Asia in Bloom: The Orchid Show.

How best to highlight the color of 10,000 blooming orchids? For Brilliance: The Orchid Show, which runs February 8 to March 22 at the Chicago Botanic Garden, the creative team started by squinting at squares of color in the slant of the afternoon sun.

Garden Gems from Faraway Places

Do you have hostas, daylilies, a Japanese maple, or a star magnolia in your garden?  How about marigolds, coleus, a gingko, or a panicle hydrangea? If so, this is a testimony to the many plant explorers who, in the past four centuries, traveled far and wide, for years at a time, in search of new plants.

For the past week, the big forklifts and trucks with their whimsical cargo have been rolling in to set up for the U.S. debut of Lightscape on November 22. Popular time slots are selling fast for the new holiday event at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

U.S. Navy veteran Anna Andersen is quick to tell you how the Chicago Botanic Garden’s impact on her life goes beyond the beauty of the plants to the nurturing she found in its Veteran Internship Program (VIP).

The handmade boxes hint at the spirit of America’s first botanist and the oldest surviving botanic garden in the country. Nestled inside each box are thought-provoking items, including pieces of a tulip poplar and honey locust trees from the beloved garden of eighteenth-century explorer and botanist John Bartram (1699-1777).

The plant collections of the Chicago Botanic Garden have a new place to show off in a “theater” designed just for them in the Helen and Richard Thomas English Walled Garden.

A striking century plant is putting on a show in the final stages of its life—it’s blooming for the first and only time in 27 years. The succulent sends up a tall stalk of blossoms right before it dies.

An old friend is back in front of the Visitor Center. The Bloom Cart shows you a curated selection of what’s in bloom across the Chicago Botanic Garden—and more.

There’s more to the North Branch Trail addition than meets the eye.

It’s a great story to tell the kids or to share with a biking buddy as you try out the North Branch Trail addition.

When we decided on the theme for this year’s Orchid Show, In the Tropics, what popped into the designer’s head was this: (wait for it; we’ll show you): Tiny islands. Tall palm trees. Splashes of color.

You might have noticed a group of hard-working high-schoolers wearing hard hats and toting shovels at the Chicago Botanic Garden this summer. The aspiring conservationists—part of the Conservation Corps—are doing important restoration work throughout the Forest Preserves of Cook County, including a stint at the Garden.

This is the story of a road trip I took with some corpse flowers, the rock stars of the plant world. One of the hallmarks of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s plant collection is the more than 70 species of Amorphophallus. In particular, Amorphophallus titanum, also called the titan arum or corpse flower, has gained attention because of its very large flower and pungent fragrance at bloom time—a hybrid of week-old gym socks and a rotting mouse that you just can’t seem to find in your kitchen.