A Visit to Chicago’s Lurie Garden

In late July, I made a short visit to some friends in Chicago whom I hadn’t seen in many years. High on my list of sights to take in were two iconic but very different gardens – the Chicago Botanic Garden about twenty miles north of the city, and the Lurie Garden, sited downtown on the south side of Millennium Park. Happily, I was able to work in a visit to both, but let’s take a look in this post at the award-winning Lurie Garden, built about ten years ago on top of the Lakefront Millennium parking garage – right, a parking garage – smack in the middle of downtown, next to the Chicago Art Institute and a stone’s throw from the famous “bean” sculpture.

Visible from the second floor of the new modern wing of the Art Institute, the 3-acre public ‘botanic garden’ adjoins a bandshell ‘headdress’ sculpture designed by Frank Gehry that anchors the Great Lawn, a public venue for concerts and other events. The garden is divided into ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ Plates, separated by what is (somewhat preciously) called ‘the Seam,’ a boardwalk boundary between the two.

A view of the Lurie Garden’s Light and Dark Plates, separated by the Seam, from the modern wing of the Chicago Art Institute.

Two outer edges of most of the garden are visually enclosed by what is called the ‘Shoulder Hedge,’ taking its name from the Carl Sandberg poem which referred to Chicago as the “city of big shoulders.” The hedge is big indeed, fifteen feet high (there are metal girders that act as frame and guide for pruning) plantings of dark evergreens, designed to protect the lower perennial plantings from visitors leaving the Great Lawn after events there. When I visited, mid-summer plantings of ornamental grasses, Amsonia hubrechtii, coneflowers and daisies were in full bloom in the Light Plate area.

Lush perennial plantings in large drifts cover the Light Plate area.

The famous Chicago skyline, with Geary’s Bandshell just visible between the Lurie and the buildings.

The Shoulder Hedge protects the perennial plantings from pedestrian traffic following events on the Great Lawn.

Ornamental grasses and coneflowers in bloom in July.

Looking back at the new modern wing of the Chicago Art Institute from the Lurie Garden

A view of the Dark Plate planting side from the edge of the Lurie Garden

The Geary Bandshell acts as a visual transition between the large skyscrapers and the lower plantings of the Lurie Garden.

The Lurie Garden won the 2008 American Society of Landscape Architects General Design Award of Excellence, honoring the Seattle landscape architecture team of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd. and the planting genius of Piet Oudolf (who was responsible for the perennial planting design). The following description of the garden comes from the ASLA website:

Chicago built itself up from marshy origins and continues to rise ambitiously skyward. A refinement of nature and natural resources has accompanied Chicago’s willful development. Similarly, the site of the Lurie Garden has been built up over time. It has been elevated from wild shoreline, to railroad yard, to parking garage, to roof garden. Lurie Garden celebrates the exciting contrast between the past and present that lay within this site.

The strong grid layout of Chicago’s streets highlights striking physical features that are not orthogonal. Railways form sensuous braids that merge and swell through the grid. Angled roads radiate out of Chicago like crooked spokes from Grant Park’s location in the center of the city. The paths and other forms of the Lurie Garden, and their relationships to the formal grid structure of Grant Park, are inspired by these patterns and by the strong forms of Chicago’s bold, urban, and Midwestern landscape.

Although I visited in mid-summer, the garden’s website photographs demonstrate clearly the beauty of the landscape year-round. If you’re visiting downtown Chicago in the coming year, I urge you to stop by the Lurie Garden and experience its pleasures for yourself.

Hoorah for the Blue Danube

Last year most of my hydrangeas were no-shows (or no-blooms, to put it more accurately). The culprit was a late spring frost which did in any hope of flowers from my mopheads (the H. paniculata ‘Limelights’ were fine).

This year I am overwhelmed with hydrangea blooms. And although I do love my ‘All Summer Beauty’ hydrangeas,

Hydrangea macrophylla ‘All Summer Beauty’ flowers next to variegated Hakone grass foliage in my front yard.

my favorite mophead is Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Blue Danube.’

‘Blue Danube ‘in bloom in 2008 in my back yard, before I lost the wooden arbor at left.

I probably bought this variety of hydrangea over ten years ago, by order two gallon-sized shrubs from an online source, Wilkerson Gardens, which apparently no longer offers them. Several years later, in a fit of horticultural ingenuity, I read an article on how to grow hydrangeas from rooted cuttings, and voila – I had two more ‘Blues.’ The photo below shows one of them growing next to an ‘Endless Summer’ – if you look carefully you can see the difference in leaf texture as well as in the appearance of the blooms. Although the web descriptions of this shrub describe it as ‘compact’ and good for containers, my experience is that it becomes fairly large (although not as large as ‘Nikko Blue’ or ‘All Summers Beauty.’)

‘Blue Danube’ is on the left (flower buds not fully colored), with ‘All Summer Beauty’ on the right. The latter’s flowerheads have smaller flowers and in my experience are less likely to color pink in my soil.

I think I love this variety so because of the strong purple-blue and purple-pink hues that the flowers have (at least in my garden). ‘All Summer Beauty’ and H. macrophylla ‘Nikko Blue’ have softer blue blooms.

‘Nikko Blue’ in my side yard

‘Blue Danube’ has colors that can’t be ignored.

That may also explain why it’s my favorite hydrangea for cutting – and for photographing when cut.

If all this has whet your appetite for a ‘Blue Danube’ or two of your own, I’m happy to report that Hydrangeas Plus offers them for sale online.

Garden Spots in Havana

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a week in Cuba with the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. I went to see Cuba before (as one of our group members put it)  “there’s a Starbucks on every corner.” It was an incredible trip, and I’m already planning to return next year if I can.

I didn’t go to photograph gardens, and the photos I took for the most part fell into other themes – architecture, people, cultural events, and the city itself. More of those images later. But to my surprise, there were plants and parks everywhere. Plants on balconies in pots. Lushly planted pocket/plaza parks. Bougainvillea growing up the sides of buildings. And in some cases, ferns sprouting out of cracks in the facades of some of the older, crumbling  but still magnificent edifices that serve as businesses or in-town tenement apartments. While I work on my other images (too many!), here are a few photos of green spaces in Havana.

Bougainvillea growing in the Plaza Cathedral in central Havana.

A variety of pots with tropical plants on the second floor apartments surrounding a square.

More consistency here, but look how large the plants are growing!

Workers setting out new plants (annuals here, probably perennials there) in a small park in a central Havana.

Cubans can be found at any time of day (or night) in the many parks dotting the center of Havana.

This looked like a self-seeded plant (or maybe a container plant) that has been allowed to grow ad infinitum.

Havana residents use their balconies to dry laundry and grow plants.

A rare ‘gated garden’ like you might see in Charleston or Georgetown.

Plants on a balcony above a restaurant spill over and soften the walls.

Inside the US Botanic Garden

Several weeks ago, before the DC area became inundated with snow, a photographer friend had some business to attend to at the U.S. Botanic Garden in downtown DC. The visit entitled her to a parking pass right in front, and she was kind enough to invite me along.

I had forgotten how nice it is to see plants in the winter without having to freeze any part of one’s anatomy off in the process. The Botanic Garden doesn’t allow tripods, so we went armed with high ISO’s and explored various parts of the building, starting with the entry hall.

Azaleas and cyclamen in bloom under a canopy of tropical palms in the entry hall of the US Botanic Garden.

The Garden’s interior spaces are designed to mimic various kinds of climates, ranging from tropical jungles to desert spaces. Along the way, I saw orchids, lots of air plants, misting water (in the jungle area), and birds of paradise. The Children’s Garden and the “Southern Exposure Garden” were “closed for the winter” but would be worth a return visit. If you’re in the DC area, don’t miss this gem, tucked away up near the Capitol. It’s a great place to forget winter and enjoy yourself.

The soaring three-story “jungle” space, viewed from the second level.

The perfect place for a beauty shot.

Bougainvillea ‘Salmon’ in the Jungle Garden

Cymbidium ‘At Sea,’ an orchid on the lower floor of the Jungle.

The smooth gray bark of a ficus tree (I think), reaching stories up in the Jungle Garden.

Misting stations keep the Jungle humid, and are a challenge for the photographer.

Blue and yellow bird of paradise plants, with an air plant “wall hanging” nearby.

More white orchids in the Jungle.

The Desert Garden, with visitors enjoying warmer temperatures than those outside.

Moving out of the Jungle into drier parts of the Botanic Garden, I spotted this Lunaform pot.

Wow, were those azaleas going on a carousel ride?