… Description: A close relative of the chickadee, this southern species is rarely spotted at the Garden. …
Type: Birding
… Sun Spot Wintercreeper is a prostrate to mound-forming evergreen with thin leatherlike glossy green leaves. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… This evergreen tree needs full sun and moderate moisture conditions. It is a specimen in a hedge. …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… O’Hare International Airport. Sometimes called the living rock cactus, Ariocarpus fissuratus is prized by collectors who either don’t know or don’t care that the plant is critically endangered. To meet that demand, unscrupulous plant dealers pay local people to … try to slip them past U.S. Customs to feed an international black market. This illegal trade is so lucrative that nearly a third of the world’s cactus species are now endangered . Contraband …
Type: Blog
… spaces where people and plants mix comfortably. An integral feature of successful garden rooms is lighting. Garden lighting is both a technical subject, concerned with volts, watts, conduits, and infrastructure, and an … in a garden from one area to another. Lighting can say "welcome" if the front entrance is lit or "not welcome" if the entrance is dark, even if the garden beds are lit. It can pull us …
Type: Plant Info
… the horticultural and the culinary. Of the few orchids that are used as edibles worldwide, one is world-famous and probably already in your kitchen cabinet: Vanilla planifolia . One of the 110 species in the orchid genus Vanilla, V. planifolia is a vining orchid that's indigenous to Mexico. Its flower, a lovely greenish-white orchid … with yellow, produces a fruit/seedpod (technically a capsule) that, when cured and dried, is familiarly called a vanilla bean. Once upon a time in a land far away... Vanilla was …
Type: Plant Info
… in the depths of winter? With just a few adjustments to the basics. Today's temperature is… Did you know that cold outdoor weather can even affect indoor orchids? You may need to move … or add a light-filtering curtain if orchids that prefer shade are getting too much sun. There is an upside to the short days and lower light of winter: it triggers the flowering process for … Nonetheless, your orchid may not need too much extra water. In any season, overwatering is the number one indoor orchid threat! Since every orchid has its own water preference, it pays …
Type: Plant Info
… A Multifaceted Resource A herbarium (say the “h”) is a place where preserved plants are collected and classified. The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Nancy Poole Rich Herbarium is home to 12,000 specimens of plants—from our own Cook County backyard and the Upper Midwest—all … database and images available online via vPlants: The Chicago Regional Virtual Herbarium . The site contains data for 80,000 plant specimens, and can provide real-time reference for scientists …
Type: Plant Info
… Viva Vita Pride Month is a time to honor the history and voices of the LGBTQIA+ community—which makes me, a plant … time. Vita Sackville-West (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons ) Sackville-West (1892-1962) is well-known for her close relationship with writer Virginia Woolf; she was also a dedicated … self-assurance, she retreated to her garden and built herself a library within a tower on the site. This space was her private refuge, where she would lock herself away for hours to write …
Type: Blog
… Thomas English Walled Garden’s six distinct rooms, all of which demonstrate unique styles, is a walk through the history of English gardening. It is also an ideal opportunity for visitors to fill their own gardening dreams with beautifully … The garden can be accessed through any number of entrances or doorways, but the most popular is the doorway beside the long border lining the western wall of the garden, where a delightfully …
Type: Walks
