… Winter is a great time to celebrate the beauty of the natural world and wildlife around you. After a big … pictures of the tracks I found. Here’s a list of four animal tracks you are likely to find in your urban neighborhood, even if you aren’t familiar with tracks and have never studied them before. 4 Animal Tracks You Can Find in Urban Areas Bird Most birds have three toes pointing forward and one toe pointing backward. …
Type: Blog
… Arboretum pledge to safeguard threatened species for Reverse the Red Day What does an orchid in Malaysia have in common with an oak in Mexico? Both have found their way onto the International Union for … a worldwide celebration of conservation success held annually on February 7th. Reverse the Red is a global movement that brings together a diverse coalition of leading scientists, advocates, …
Type: Blog
… the recommendations of federal, state, and county officials, the Chicago Botanic Garden is canceling the Inspiring Nature Play conference originally planned for May 6, 2020. Please stay in touch with us through social media and our website in the event we are able to reschedule for later this year. This annual conference will highlight …
Type: Item Detail
… professional greenhouse growers. An ancient art and science long used on fruit trees, grafting is the placement of the tissues of one plant (called a scion) onto another plant (called a … more tomatoes over a longer period of time. Curious about the process and whether the price tag could be justified—grafted plants run from $9 to $18 a plant—I decided to graft some tomato plants myself and grow them out. My first foray was in winter 2013. The Chicago Botanic Garden’s propagator in the plant production department, Cathy …
Type: Page
… 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 …
Type: Blog
… of big plants, and we thought for a second it might be the same as the big plants, but it is definitely different. It’s our first field day. We don’t know what this plant is called, and it’s a hot and humid summer day in Chicago, and we have been searching through our identification guidebooks for what seems like forever. “Is it this one?” we ask each other, pointing to pictures in the book where the leaves kinda sorta look like our little plant. Finally, we flip through the …
Type: Blog
… too. × It’s the English Walled Garden gate! The Helen and Richard Thomas English Walled Garden is a favorite among visitors and was originally created by the noted British landscape architect, John Brookes, in 1971. Each of its six rooms take you on a mini journey into English garden design through the … discover a thought-provoking journey. × Did you guess the Japanese Garden Bridge? Way to go! In the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Japanese Garden, this bridge is part of what’s called Sansho-En, a …
Type: Blog
… The spots of green usually come from evergreen trees that keep their leaves year-round. In the Midwest, those tend to be conifers , which have modified leaves called needles. I marvel at how conifer branches and needles, laden with snow, hold all that weight. In contrast, I appreciate the exposed branch structure of a deciduous tree, naked of its leaves. The ingenuity of leaf loss is protection, preventing branches from bearing too much weight and breaking when it snows. All I …
Type: Blog
… When it’s 115 degrees Fahrenheit in the drought-stricken Mojave desert, you’ll forgive our botanists for hoping against hope for a … native seeds for the national Seeds of Success (SOS) program this field season. The Garden is an active partner in SOS, led by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, to collect seeds for … participate in the Seeds of Success program. The goal is to collect 80,000 viable seeds per site, but the devastating heat and drought in the west has made the job especially challenging. …
Type: Blog
… The first moth to emerge in the Butterflies & Blooms exhibition is the Atlas moth ( Attacus atlas) , which is native to Southeast Asia. The Atlas moth lives for … all. It survives its adult life feeding off stored fat. Though not the largest Lepidoptera in the world (that award goes to the white witch moth [ Thysania agrippina ]), the Atlas moth …
Type: Blog
