Flowering crabapples highlight the spirit of spring. Prized for their profuse display of flowers in April and May, these ornamental trees boast a variety of sizes, shapes and forms from dwarf and weeping to mounding, wide-spreading and upright. Besides the spring flowers, the display is followed again in late summer with colorful fruits, providing for two seasons of outstanding interest. And, …
Type: Plant Info
In the private world of the gardener's imagination there exist certain flowers that have entwined themselves in our past. We associate them with happy memories of childhood, with family celebrations, and with traditions. Lilacs, most certainly, are a part of many of our fragrant dreams, whether we have actually grown them or not. Lilac wears a purple plume, Scented with a sweet …
Type: Plant Info
June is National Rose Month and the Krasberg Rose Garden puts on quite the show. More than 5,000 roses fill the air with their delicate, sweet scents and countless colors. The three-acre Rose Garden, dedicated in 1985, features more than 200 rose varieties including hybrid teas, floribundas, miniatures, grandifloras, climbers, and shrubs. Old garden roses (also called heirloom or antique roses) …
Type: Plant Info
What the Garden Is Doing…and What You Can Do at Home Safeguarding Long-term Survival Environmental threats like urbanization, climate change, invasive species, and pollution have caused many plants to become rare or endangered. By banking seeds of these plants in safe storage, away from danger, the Chicago Botanic Garden is working to safeguard their long-term survival. Also known as ex-situ …
Type: Plant Info
For Chicago-area gardeners, January is primarily a time for planning, not planting. With winter in full swing in our USDA Hardiness Zones 5b and 6a, January is a great month to prepare for the gardening season ahead and to tend to the indoor plants brightening our living spaces. There may still be important outside tasks—primarily to help protect trees, shrubs, and perennials contending with …
Type: Plant Info
Evening Those treasured hours between the end of the day and the beginning of night are beautiful moments to reacquaint yourself with your Garden. During this period of magical change, the most extraordinary happenings can occur in the landscape you thought you knew so well. The interplay of angled light and lengthening shadows creates new effects, bringing into the spotlight the very plants that …
Type: Walks
The hydrangea has come a long way from being just a popular Victorian shrub. Hybridization of certain species of hydrangea has shifted them from their exclusive provenance in New England, the Pacific Northwest, and the more temperate areas of the South, to the flat gardens of the Midwest, where they are flourishing as both suburban and urban flowering shrubs. Along the way, new cultivars acquired …
Type: Plant Info
Our ghost orchid—a star at London’s Chelsea Flower Show and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew—was set up for success by an international conservation team. The unexpected call came in mid-February. Could the Chicago Botanic Garden present a blooming ghost orchid on a global stage in London? An international team of orchid experts would work with us to get the rare plant to the Royal Horticultural …
Type: Blog
Fragrant white lilies are the stars of a moon garden. Anemone x hybrida 'Whirlwind' “And still within a summer's night A something so transporting bright, I clap my hands to see.” — Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) The reclusive American poet, Emily Dickinson, was devoted to gardening and no doubt spent evenings wandering her family's gardens and meadows for inspiration. There's much to …
Type: Plant Info
Bringing a bit of your garden indoors to join a celebration can be as easy as cutting a few evergreen branches for a vase. But if you are a little bit more ambitious about your holiday decor, it's surprisingly easy to create sophisticated craft projects with flowers, foliage, nuts and pine cones, and foam forms, according to Nancy Clifton, Horticulture Program Specialist. First, decide if you …
Type: Plant Info
