… Q. I grow bronze fennel as an ornamental plant in my flower garden. How can I prevent the excessive self-seeding that occurs over the winter? A. The umbels containing the many seeds ripen in late fall. If you are not harvesting these seeds for culinary or herbal uses, remove the flower heads from the stalks in early fall or late summer. …
Type: Plant Info
… ‘Lady in Black’ features purple foliage and stems that are topped by a mass of tiny pale pink to white … October. It is a mounded perennial that grows 3 feet tall and wide and was rated highly in the aster trials held at the Garden. Great plant for attracting pollinating insects like honey bees, butterflies and moths. Pinch back the stems beginning in the spring through early July to produce smaller plants. This aster grows best in full sun and …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… Immerse yourself in the world of roses. Using colored pencils, wet and dry, study and draw plein air-style in the Chicago Botanic Garden’s glorious Krasberg Rose Garden and develop finished work in the studio. Dress for the weather. A supply list will be sent. Prerequisite: Experience with …
Type: Item Detail
… “In the woods where the snow is thick, bars of sunlight lay like pale fire.” — Katherine … the quiet season. On bright days, they cast long shadows across the ground as the sun sits low in the sky. At sunset, their elegant silhouettes are often backlit by fiery skies. And when the snow arrives, it cloaks their outstretched limbs in a layer of white that gleams on even the darkest nights. Unlike during summer, when there are …
Type: Plant Info
… Q. I am concerned with the growing number of weeds in my yard. I have tried overseeding in the hopes of crowding out the weeds. Any suggestions would be appreciated. A. There are many … your lawn for a few days before and after application. If you need to use the weed killers in your freshly seeded area, wait until that new grass has grown enough to be mowed three or four …
Type: Plant Info
… Take a deep breath, and feel the love Is it possible to breathe in … love? We think so. The heady scents that flourish at the Chicago Botanic Garden are enough … and other creatures to transfer the plants’ pollen and extend the species. At some point in time, humans embarked on their own love affair with fragrances of the natural world. There’s … & Programs at the Garden. “It can be emotive, mentally transporting us to a time and place in our lives that we may have forgotten, or evoking special memories of someone who's no longer …
Type: Blog
… and movement from the UK—featuring thousands of points of light pulsing, like energy suspended in time. Premiering at Lightscape in collaboration with Culture Creative, this awe-inspiring installation draws visitors into an … of nature. But it’s also the same impulse. I can stare at a tree for hours and lose myself in it. Winter light festivals have that same effect: they help people step out of themselves and …
Type: Blog
… To understand spring, you must walk in the woods. A Native Ecosystem Here, in the Chicago Botanic Garden’s McDonald Woods, spring arrives unaided by mowers and edgers, or fertilizers and bags of peat moss. In this hundred-acre restored oak woodland, spring means the welcome presence of natural wetland …
Type: Walks
… If a botanist shouts “Eureka!” in a forest, can you hear it? Well, that’s exactly what happened—so to speak—when a team of … the pink lady’s slipper ( Cypripedium acaule ), a dazzling orchid that has not been seen in Illinois since 1999. That’s right. For a quarter century, conservationists had begun to accept that the species no longer existed here. That all changed in May when Grant Fessler, a botanist with the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Plants of Concern rare …
Type: Blog
… trees and shrubs at this time of the year, it’s not a good idea to plant evergreens this late in the season. Evergreens planted in late fall don’t have time to become established before the onset of cold winter temperatures … unable to take up enough water due to their reduced root mass. It is best to plant evergreens in the spring when they have an entire growing season to become established. …
Type: Plant Info
