My Chicago Botanic Garden
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The Chicago Botanic Garden cultivates the power of plants to sustain and enrich life. The Chicago Botanic Garden is a 385-acre living plant museum situated on nine islands featuring 26 display gardens and surrounded by four natural areas.
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
The Chicago Botanic Garden’s Lenhardt Library has a wonderful rare book collection, and soon it will be able to share some of those rare gems with the world. Selections from The Language of Flowers collections are being digitized and conserved with a new grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and those selections will ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Looking for a feel-good, beautiful, reasonably priced gift? Plants are all that and even on trend—see #plantsmakepeoplehappy; it’s an Instagram thing. Here’s a quick guide on which plants to buy—as a gift or for yourself. Make sure to get them to their destination safely by wrapping them head to toe at the store and getting ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Fast and graceful, hummingbirds flit from flower to flower—but which ones and why? A Chicago Botanic Garden scientist and his collaborators recently made some unexpected findings on the subject. It’s a common perception that plants are perfectly matched to their pollinators and that each pollinator has a specific flower type that they are attracted to ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Have you ever noticed the first crocuses poking out of the snow or the brilliant, changing colors of fall leaves? If so, we need your help with the critical work of studying how plants are affected by a changing climate. Budburst, a project adopted by the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2017, brings together citizens, research ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Quick poll: Does the word “moving” trigger your anxiety? How about “moving more than 100 plants”? Former Chicago Botanic Garden horticulturist Tom Weaver recently moved to Minnesota to start a new chapter. Along with his husband and dog, he brought his plant family, a love he has nurtured since childhood. “My mom makes fun of me ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Take a peek in your closet, and you might find a long wooden broom for sweeping up dust or offering rides to witches and wizards. For broom maker John Spannagel of Hidalgo, Illinois, brooms are more than just a pantry item. They’re a labor of love, made with a special ingredient: broomcorn. Broomcorn is a ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
This is the story of a road trip I took with some corpse flowers, the rock stars of the plant world. One of the hallmarks of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s plant collection is the more than 70 species of Amorphophallus. In particular, Amorphophallus titanum, also called the titan arum or corpse flower, has gained attention ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Summer won’t be over for a while in my book—not as long as there are dragonflies around. I think I’ve seen more dragonflies this year at the Chicago Botanic Garden than I have in the past ten years combined. The quick, strong fliers seem to be everywhere. Some of the dragonflies migrate south toward the Gulf ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
Are your summer container gardens in need of a fall makeover? Good news! There are many fall-flavored plants that will provide you with texture, form, and long-lasting colors in both flowers and foliage. I love the combination of purple or blue asters (Symphyotrichum) with ornamental kale as the colors play off each other nicely for a long-lasting ..read more
My Chicago Botanic Garden
3y ago
At Butterflies & Blooms on Monday, I saw something I had never seen before in my five years as a butterfly wrangler at the Chicago Botanic Garden. I noticed that a leopard lacewing’s right wings were bright orange, just like any other male of the species, but the left wings were beige—only females have beige wings. This ..read more