… Want to help monarch butterflies? Be careful when selecting your milkweed. Not all plants that go by the common name of "milkweed" are the food that these butterflies need. Milkweed is both a food source and a host plant on which the monarch butterflies lay their eggs. Monarchs … the following milkweed species (Asclepias) are native: Asclepias amplexicaulis is native to our prairies and is suitable for planting in sunny perennial flower gardens. The flowers are …
Type: Blog
… How to relax in nature, even when you can’t get away? Daydream, according to the American Heart Association. Start a bucket list. Even just the thought of escaping into … So we asked some of them: What plant would you most like to see in the wild? The common thread is that there is no common thread. These are not your garden-variety plant lovers. These are …
Type: Blog
… The Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden is the place to explore small-space gardening. Seven Basil Types Planted at the Regenstein … different basil varieties, laid out in a pinwheel design, and all grown from seed. It’s enough to make a gardener’s—or a foodie’s—head spin with plans for dinner…and for your own herb garden. …
Type: Blog
… the Chicago Botanic Garden has been tracking the recent rains. We know many of you are anxious to get planting done—it is spring, right? But we encourage caution and patience. If it squishes, wait. Working with wet soil and turf damages it. Here are tips to help gardeners navigate Chicago’s spring: Wait until the soil dries out to get back in your …
Type: Blog
… Pondering the Prairie Series Life in the prairie in the middle of winter is fairly uneventful; at least for humans who focus primarily on life above ground. Perhaps now is a good time to reflect on the diversity of life in a prairie below ground. All one has to do is drive across the Midwest and view the unending and, to many, boring, miles of corn and …
Type: Blog
… a question we heard a lot from Spike’s visitors this past weekend. The titan arum, native to the rainforests of the island of Sumatra in Indonesia, was first “discovered” by Italian … August 6, 1878, he first observed the leaves and fruits of a plant (interestingly, August 6 is the date we put Spike on public view!) . Several weeks later, Beccari saw a flowering plant for the first time. He sent a few tubers and seeds to Florence, Italy, but the tubers all perished; a few seeds, however, eventually germinated. One …
Type: Blog
… the Grunsfeld Children’s Growing Garden: Naranjilla (pronounced nahr-ahn- HEE -yah). It’s easy to see why. You can find this naranjilla ( Solanum quitoense ) in Bed #10 in the Growing Garden. This attractive plant has large, thick, green leaves, is about 10–12 inches long and 8–10 inches wide, with deeply serrated edges, and is completely … (which are not really hairs—in the botanical world they are called “tricomes” ) . It is native to Ecuador and other South American countries. There is more to notice about this …
Type: Blog
… at the Chicago Botanic Garden, there are dragonflies everywhere! The quick, strong fliers seem to love the Garden. Eastern pondhawk dragonfly, female. Most dragonflies have very … field of vision that helps it avoid predators. The most abundant dragonfly I’ve seen is the eastern pondhawk, with blue dasher dragonflies coming in a close second. I’m also seeing … a few damselflies, which are generally smaller and more thin-bodied than dragonflies and tend to hold their wings above their bodies. (See my blog post Damselflies 101 for more information.) …
Type: Blog
… the McDonald Woods, which wrap around the northeastern edge of the Chicago Botanic Garden. But to Jim Steffen , senior ecologist at the Garden, the oak woodland is a bustling center for natural processes and species, and may hold answers to unsolved scientific questions. Purple milkweed ( Asclepias purpurascens ) blooms in the …
Type: Blog
… In gardening, as in life, patience is a virtue. Twelve years ago, the Garden embarked on a mission to bring a rock star of the plant world to the Chicago Botanic Garden. The titan arum ( Amorphophallus titanum ), also known as the …
Type: Blog
