… horticulturist Goals: My goal is to travel to another growing zone to familiarize myself with the plants growing there as much as possible. When I travel, I always try to pick up a book … garden. I also fancy the world of fungi and will be helping friends inoculate their properties with oyster, reishi, and morel mushrooms. Advice: Stay curious, try something new, and have fun! … grown before or learn a new technique. Resolve to become a more thoughtful gardener by working with the cycles of Mother Nature and trusting your instincts. Lastly, eat something from your …
Type: Blog
… Sometimes spring just doesn’t want to arrive. Sometimes it can’t wait to burst forth with flowers and foliage and make everything look fresh and new. A delayed spring, while … ornamental in an otherwise empty bed. Eventually these will grow out into large bushy plants with showy red flowers, but for now we can enjoy the unique form of the new growth. Many geranium … and red new growth that almost looks like flames coming out of the ground. Having plants with vibrant new growth can give your garden a whole new dimension. Imagine how bright blue …
Type: Blog
… The time has come for homemade mustard—and you won’t believe how easy and tasty it is. Start with the Basics As always, we turned to program horticulturist Nancy Clifton to learn the … passed around ten jars of flavored mustards for us to sample. Revelations all! By tinkering with the basic ingredients—using cider or champagne or balsamic vinegars, adding fresh or dried herbs, experimenting with different whole mustard seeds, adapting recipes from cookbooks and the web —Nancy had us …
Type: Blog
… programs such as classes, field trips, horticultural therapy, and Camp CBG. Pillar has been with the Garden since 2017, when she started as an intern in Plant Production. She has since … in 2020. Her interest in nature and plants led her to graduate from Macalester College with a bachelor’s degree in biology, where she also worked on the school’s grounds crew. A lifelong Chicagoan, she sees the immense value in connecting with plants and having access to green space. …
Type: Staff bio
… miniatures no bigger than 4 inches across to giant doubles that can reach 8 inches in size, with dozens of frilly petals. Most commonly found are the large, red cultivars such as ‘Red … ‘Bethlehem’ , or Star-Of-Bethlehem. These bulbs produce a 1- to 1½-foot-tall spike loaded with clean, white, star-shaped blooms. They grow best in a bright, cool location—the same type of … classic white flowers, a newer species, Ornithogalum dubium, has become available recently, with flowers ranging from buttery yellow to neon orange. Florist cyclamen in the Semitropical …
Type: Blog
… day. The sun shines through my office window, illuminating the old and worn photo on my desk. With the image is a handwritten note: “1912 photo of Bucknell botany class field trip.” … are Cool, Too!”, blogging for the Huffington Post , and peppering social media outlets with posts/shares/tweets about plants and biodiversity. Efforts like these can engender greater … awareness, I think, but they are not enough. Unsurprisingly, the best way to connect people with the real world is still to get them outside, unplugged and in position to see real things in …
Type: Blog
… Botanic Garden floriculturist Tim Pollak shares how you can bring the party to your garden with a few simple tricks for evening entertaining. Plant light-colored flowers Enhance the … nicotiana, and ipomoea alba. Install night accent lighting Lure guests down the garden path with purposefully placed outdoor lighting. You can shine focal points on specimen plants, and … and backlighting effects that will enhance the setting of your evening party. Keep warm with fire pits People are drawn to fire pits, which create a campfire-like atmosphere, said …
Type: Blog
… a beautiful—and poisonous—fall-blooming perennial. It also has a colorful history associated with werewolves, vampires, and witches. The plant has been a familiar plot element in horror … garlic as a repellent for vampires in film. Nevertheless, the correlation of wolfsbane with the supernatural predates Hollywood and familiar authors. In Greek myth, wolfsbane … other perennials fade for the season. Ancient Greeks hunted wolves by poisoning their bait with this plant, which led to the common name of wolfsbane. While those hunting traditions were …
Type: Blog
… that time, she labeled and tagged unique taxa in the Garden and Greenhouses and assisted with plant inventories. Gabriela managed projects within established scope, schedule, and budget, and established and maintained relationships with vendors and suppliers, focusing on minority- and women-owned businesses. She has trained and … Garden, where EDIA principles were developed and instituted. She hosted and co-hosted meetings with staff both in English and Spanish, emphasizing the importance of treating people with …
Type: Staff bio
… beauty, those bits of color bring my attention to the bigger world around me. My work with Budburst , the Chicago Botanic Garden’s community science project, has made me appreciate … these moments even more. Budburst encourages everyone to observe and record how plants change with the seasons. The spots of green usually come from evergreen trees that keep their leaves … 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 …
Type: Blog
