… After a year of extraordinary challenges, we are looking forward to all that summer 2021 has to offer in the Lavin Plant Evaluation Garden. Here at the Chicago … ( Eupatorium perfoliatum ‘Polished Brass’), which at 68 inches tall and 96 inches wide, is one of the most pollinator-friendly plants ever. Eupatorium perfoliatum Astrantia Echinacea … plant is regularly monitored for its adaptability to the environmental conditions of the trial site, disease and pest problems, and the ornamental value of the flowers, foliage, and habits. …
Type: Blog
… trains rolling at the Chicago Botanic Garden. A room in the basement of the Regenstein Center is the hive of repair activity for the Model Railroad Garden. There are also ghost trains for … keep the repair shop busy year-round. This summer, a few of our younger visitors got a chance to interview our engineers. View the video on YouTube here . The work is crucial. The Model … railroad cars and 125 engines, and during the season, they run on a punishing schedule: eight to nine hours a day, seven days a week. “The trains are not designed to operate the way we …
Type: Blog
… of music from Northwestern University under Elizabeth Cifani and Edward Druzinsky, Joy wanted to create her own style of music on the kong hou, or double strung Chinese harp. In 23 years, Joy …
Type: Event for Calendar
… Chabaud, a well-known gardener in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Chabaud passed the specimen on to a taxonomist who named the species in his honor. Treasured as a local medicinal plant, …
Type: Garden Guide Plant
… 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 one to two weeks, so its main purpose after emerging …
Type: Blog
… like something a scarecrow might wear. His bushy black eyebrows dance when he talks, bringing to mind the woolly bear caterpillars abundant in the fall. A playfulness—tinged with the … smile on another jack-o-lantern gives a mixed message. Obenchain describes it as an “I’m-happy-to-see-you-because-I’m-going-to-eat you” look. “I get a lot of, ‘Wow! I could never do that!’” … the shape of the pumpkin has the idea. The pumpkin determines what you’re going to carve. How is it going to sit? Is it a “Bert” or an “Ernie”? (A Bert has a more elongated shape, while an …
Type: Blog
… designer Bunny Williams of Bunny Williams Interior Design at Get Growing Weekend. We spoke to her about her potted paradise design. Q: Describe your process for designing your container. … a good container? A: One of the things I’m always thinking about when I’m doing a container is height. When you first plant a container, all of the plants are very small. But a month later … when they’ve grown in, they’re at their full profusion. They look quite different. You have to think in advance about plants growing to varying heights. For instance, I always like to have …
Type: Blog
… An exotic, tall-dark-and-handsome visitor has returned to the Chicago Botanic Garden this spring. Its bold blooms draw pollinators in as well as Garden visitors. What is it, you ask? Some of the most unusual plants our Production Greenhouse team grow for our … that produces giant spikes of flowers—but not right away. Echium take two years of growth to become the epic plants you see throughout the Garden. You won’t find these Dr. Seussian plants …
Type: Blog
… yourself back from buying every type you see on the shelf, you also know that this feeling is fleeting. Those beautiful colors and unusual varieties are in their prime now, when the hot … for a fruiting pepper plant. In just a month or two, the number of varieties will start to dwindle and your hot spicy recipes will taste bland again. Fear not! You can preserve that … easily with pickled peppers! But even Peter Piper couldn’t pick a peck of them. You have to pickle them yourself. Luckily, pickling peppers is perfectly painless. Hot or not Just how …
Type: Blog
… shadowed water below. Doctoral student Lynnaun Johnson wades over for a closer look. Habitat is shrinking for this reclusive orchid, and he is using a unique approach to better understand the species’ uncommon lifestyle. During March 2016 fieldwork in the Florida … deeper every day—even when it meant paddling his canoe within 10 feet of a sunstruck alligator to reach the widely dispersed plants. Each time he located an orchid, he looked past the plant …
Type: Blog
