Travel Story--Chicago Botanic Garden

Botanic gardens have many functions: as places to grow and protect rare plants, as places to show diverse plants to the public, as places to recommend yard and garden plants, as places to breed plants for human uses, and more. The Chicago Botanic Garden is no exception.  website

I visited for the first time in June. It is beautiful.

Chicago Botanic Garden

It had flower beds for plant geeks like me. One set featured plants that originated on different continents

Plants from Europe
(pinks (Dianthus), grape leaves, carrots or argula visible here)

Plants from Europe we often see include daffodils, violets, foxgloves, daffodils, boxwoods and hollies.

Plants from Asia
(portulaca and coleus most visible)

Other common plants from Asia are peonies, ginkgo, Japanese maples, camellias, jasmins, and weeping willows.

Nearby I found flowerbeds dedicated to showing plants from different plant families, for example, a bed for the iris family, Iridaceae (see photo), another for the pea family (Fabacaceae) and another for the sunflower family (Asteraceae). In these, you can spot the similarities that underlie the clustering of plants into families. 

Iris Family

These beds were clearly a lot of work, because many of the plants featured were not winter-hardy, so were raised in a greenhouse and planted out every spring. 

Then I wandered further west to find plantings with plants native to Illinois' prairies, for example spiderwort (Tradescantia in the dayflower family Commelinaceae) with lovely blue-purple flowers

Spiderwort, Tradescantia

and false indigo, Baptisia (pea family Fabaceae). I have killed a series of false indigo plants, because Colorado is outside their native range (too dry!). So I admired those in Chicago which were growing so very well. This one is probably Baptisia leucophaea, called plains wild indigo. 

plains wild indigo, Baptisia leucophaea

Close by were beds of forest wildflowers of Illinois, for example wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis, buttercup family, Ranunculaceae) the wonderful red columbine of eastern North America

Canadian columbine, Aquilegia canadensis

and the anemones (genus Anemone buttercup family Ranunculaceae) below. There are at least 25 species of Anemone in North America and I don't know them very well, so I'll just call them anemones. Online plant id aps told me the genus was Anemonastrum, but apparently Anemonastrum species are Eurasian, so would not be in the Chicago Botanic Garden's native collection. 

white anemones under the trees in the native garden

Along the ponds and waterways that make the Chicago Botanic Garden so picturesque grew native wetland plants such as the interior blue flag iris, Iris virginiana (iris family, Iridaceae).

blue is interior blue flag iris, Iris virginiana 
The yellow flowers in the foreground are golden alexanders,
(Zizia species, carrot family Apiaceae) which were abundant and in full bloom.

Of course there were beds of cultivated plants, herbs to trees, providing Chicago residents with yard and garden ideas. 

All of this set in a park-like environment, beautiful for a summer outing.  

Inviting paths

There are many special displays, and of them I visited the butterfly garden. Lots of beautiful tropical butterflies to watch. 

But the best part of the butterfly garden was the delight of the children; timid, curious, excited, and more. I left smiling.

Neat flower bed beyond a beautiful lawn

There were sections that were too manicured for my taste, and a lot of the recommended plants were not native. Gardening is changing fast, moving to reduce lawns, monoculture, and the use of chemicals, and furthermore to garden with native plants to support butterflies and birds. Institutions like botanic gardens cannot respond rapidly. However, that did not stop me from feeling ill-at-ease in vast weedless grass lawns. I like the look in the photo below (rocks, mix of plants) better than the photo above, where everything is groomed. Of course, my profession was ecology, appreciating nature's disorder; other people will have developed different tastes. 

Naturalistic flowerbed

In the main building was an innovative use of plants I really liked. The photo below is the entry to the cafe, and the plants growing in the planter are spinach (Spinacia oleracea). I hadn't seen spinach used as an ornamental before, but it has gorgeous deep green leaves. 

The Chicago Botanic Garden had displays and collections for serious botanists, for gardeners, for casual visitors, for children...a beautiful and interesting place to visit.

Comments and corrections welcome.

A Wandering Botanist

More at awanderingbotanist.com

Join me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AWanderingBotanist