To continue with my visit to the Chicago Botanic Garden…With so much to see and only a few short hours, I decided to set some priorities. Since I’m in the throes of my own vegetable garden maintenance, I first headed over to see how the professionals fashion and keep up a vegetable garden in the summer heat.
It seemed that everyone else had the same idea, because the place was packed with people ogling tomatoes, leering at berries and salivating over apples.
The entrance takes you over a foot bridge and past a bed of miniature sunflowers that were in their glory. I couldn’t help myself snapping photos of other people’s children who were entranced by the sunny flowers.
Cute Kid (not mine) at the Entrance to the Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
Just beyond the entrance and to the right is one of the most clever combinations of flowers and vegetables that I have ever seen. The fascinating mixture of cabbages, primroses and golden coin (I think) topped a concrete retaining wall that surrounded espaliered apple trees.
Cabbages and Flowers in the Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
Mixing vegetables and flowers isn’t at all a new idea. Our Colonial ancestors mixed all sorts of plants into a pleasing and workable jumble. But this combination was, I think, absolutely artful.
Espaliered Apple Trees, Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
Whoever planned the vegetable garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden has a real fondness for orderly fruit. There are rows and rows of espaliered apples, espaliered pears and colonnaded apples. They even have whipped rangy raspberry and blackberry plants into submission into orderly rows, climbing obediently up trellises. I envision a jack-booted gardener with a crop patrolling up and down to ensure no one gets out of line.
Collonaded Apple Trees, Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
The rest of the vegetable garden is also highly organized and beautiful, if not as inspiring as those cabbages and fruit tree contortionists.
Cold Frames, Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
There were beds of basil, which beautifully illustrated the wide variety of plants in the basil world. Tomatoes were grown on iron trellises typically used for vining flowers. And here and there, flowers were mixed in to provide some continuity between the beds and some color. There was a lovely cold frame area connected to a very small, and probably inadequate greenhouse.
Basil Bed, Vegetable and Fruit Garden, Chicago Botanic Garden
Finally, I was most amused with a sign announcing an “under construction” exhibit—FOR WEEDS! Hah! My weed exhibit is flourishing. At least in this area I excel beyond the Chicago Botanic Garden!
There is more to report in the next couple of days. I have also posted a series of photos on the Chicago Botanic Garden in my photo album, where you can see other places I have visited.
Ciao!
Robin
I’ve been visiting gardens and nature places for a while now as part of my business travel policy of making time to see places of interest besides conference rooms.
As a bona fide control freak, I find I am less unhinged by the inevitable travails of travel if there is something on the other end of the path traveled besides work. And, at least in the spring and summer, what better destination than a walk in a beautiful garden, eh?
Chicago Botanic Garden
So since I was headed to Chicago for a meeting, I blocked out Sunday afternoon to visit the Chicago Botanic Garden.
Trust me. It is no small undertaking to try to see the Chicago Botanic Garden in a single afternoon. With 385 acres of displays, 2.3 million plants and stunning garden architecture and about 6 million other garden lovers visiting at the same time, there’s a lot to see.
As with nearly all of the botanical gardens I have visited, the Chicago Botanic Garden is arranged in a meandering path of interconnected theme gardens. It’s quite a lengthy and diverse list:
-Aquatic Garden
-Bonsai Collection
-Bulb Garden
-Circle Garden
-Dwarf Conifer Garden
-Enabling Garden
-English Oak Meadow
-English Walled Garden
-Evening Island
-Fruit and Vegetable Garden
-Greenhouses
-Heritage Garden
-Japanese Garden
-Lakeside Gardens
-Landscape Garden
-McDonald Woods
-Model Railroad Garden
-Native Plant Garden
-Prairie
-River Valley
-Rose Garden
-Sensory Garden
-Shade Evaluation Garden
-Spider Island
-Sun Evaluation Garden
-Water Gardens
-Waterfall Garden
Whew.
The thing that was really missing, however, was a NAP GARDEN. After walking for hours and hours, I longed for a shady lawn where I could stretch out and close my eyes. Looking around at the other garden peepers, I wasn’t alone. But although there were some beautiful lawns, it was clear that they were designed as throughways and byways—not for napping.
Chicago Botanic Garden
Since I’m still catching up with work, I’ll be splitting my post on the gardens for the next couple of days with some photos and brief observations. I consider visiting professional gardens an educational experience. The plant pros have the luxury and the budget to experiment and find the optimum plant varieties for their locations, toy with various combinations of plants to achieve the maximum effect and work with architectural pros to design the most pleasing of hardscape to support the plants. There is much to be learned from all that hard work and experience.
Yes, I learn a good deal from reading all the great garden blogs as well as from reading the gardening magazines that fill my mailbox. But there is something even more effective about actually SEEING for yourself the effects of different plant combinations in a garden setting. And looking at a photo of a flower isn’t nearly as informative as seeing the actual beast. I mean, how many times have we been disappointed with our orders from nurseries with fancy catalogs?
So visit again soon and I’ll share some photos and naïve observations about things I learned at the Chicago Botanic Garden. And if you have posted your own garden or nature travel blog posts, will you let me know about it by leaving a comment?
Ciao!
Robin
Living out here in the country, I feel a yearning to learn the names of things, the nature of things and understand the cycles of life around us. I want to be a naturalist! (Not a naturist.)
I suppose before there were Barnes & Nobles with nifty identifying books and prior to when Al Gore invented the Internet, we had to rely on our parents, grandparents and teachers to tell us the names of things. Now, Google can help us put names the creatures in the world around us.
That is, if you believe everything you read on the Internet.
Giving a name to an animal, a bug or a plant is the beginning of knowing the nature of that animal, bug or plant. When you can name it, you can refer to IT, add to your library of information about IT. It provides a pinpoint reference for what IT is. You can explain IT to others and feel on a first-name familiarity with IT. IT becomes a part of you.
At least, that’s what I think.
In the seven years we’ve lived here on this property (about 21 or so acres), I’ve made some on-again, off-again efforts at putting names to things. Now, with my nifty new camera by my side, I can photograph IT and then do research to identify IT that doesn’t have to rely on my aging memory.
And with this nifty new blog, I can check to make sure that I’m not off track about what IT is. I can ask people like Ruthie to help! Or maybe even Julie, the uber-naturalist, would drop by and straighten me out!
Out here in the country, the farmers give their own names to things. For example, Farmer Rudy, who tends our hay field, calls some of the vines in our trees monkey vines. Now, a quick Google search tells me that there are, indeed, some plants called monkey vines. But the vines he’s referring to have little or nothing to do with the monkey vines mentioned on Google.
So just what ARE those darned monkey vines?
Similarly, the locals call these beautiful, wild flowers that twine up high through the trees trumpet flowers, no doubt because of their trumpet-like shape.
Mystery Flower Identified – Trumpet Vine (Thanks Carol and Ruthie for the ID!)
But IS this a trumpet flower? We have dozens of them, providing bright spots of color in the foliage in the hot months of August.
Now, I’ve already threatened to have my own little butterfly gallery. So here are two more candidates.
Mystery butterfly #1
I’m pretty sure this is a butterfly and not a moth because of the knobby ends on his antennae. He’s a small, light green fellow. There are many of his mates that hang out with him at our butterfly bush–an aptly named bush if I ever met one.
Cabbage White Butterfly (Thanks Ruthie for the ID)
Similarly, this little white butterfly sporting the black spot is plentiful here at the Bumblebee Garden. I consider myself fortunate to have captured his image because they are usually flitting around rapidly, seldom landing for very long.
Cabbage White Butterfly
Not, I actually DO know the names of some things here at the Bumblebee Garden.
For example, I know that the box turtles around here are generally Eastern box turtles.
Eastern Box Turtle
One of the things I love about living out here is how people have respect for turtles. After a rain, it is not unusual to see dozens of turtles slowly crossing the road. People invariably drive around them. And it is not a rare scene to see someone stop a car and gently move a turtle off to the side. In fact, I have NEVER seen a squished box turtle. And there is PLENTY of other road kill around here.
Finally, I definitely know about these wild creatures.
Papillons
They may look like tender fluffs of fur, but these animals are FIERCE. I just have to say the word “deer” in a normal tone of voice and they are on TRIPLE HIGH ALERT, darting from window to window, ready to stalk and chase down the offending creature. When I open the door, they RACE out and chase down the deer–at least until they hit the edge of the woods. They do not do woods.
They also know “squirrel,” “bird” and anything that begins with “Is that a…”
So there you go.
Anyone who wants to help advance my naturalist education, chime right in and give me the name for IT!
Robin
