Volunteer's blog

Tonight, December 16, experience the Lurie Garden in winter! Enjoy the tranquil glow of luminaries as you appreciate the variety of textures in the garden during twilight. Lurie Garden staff will give tours highlighting plants that add winter interest to your garden. Enjoy caroling at the Cloud Gate sculpture and also ice skating near the Park Grill (fee for skate rental).

No registration is required for this free, all ages event.  Meet at the south end of the Lurie Garden boardwalk.

Have a shady spot in your yard? Coral bells perform well in shade while providing great texture and color to your garden design. At Lurie we grow Heuchera villosa ‘Autumn Bride,’ a shade tolerant perennial that can handle dry conditions such as under a tree.  This fuzzy chartreuse foliage grows to 2 ft and stays pretty from spring through fall.  A foam of white flowers emerge on panicles above the foliage in late summer and persists through fall. Huechera villosa (also called alumroot) is native to the eastern United States and tends to grow on cliffs and in rocky, mountainous areas. Native Americans made a tonic out of the roots to treat inflammation. This cultivar Heuchera villosa stands out among the hundreds of new coral bell cultivars that have flooded the nursery market over the past 30 years. H. ‘Autumn Bride’ is versatile, handling sun and shade. If you choose a shady spot, but a moist one, look out for fungal problems in mid-summer. Otherwise, this plant is disease resistant, drought tolerant, and does not require fertilizers.  H. ‘Autumn Bride has larger leaves than that of many other coral bells, so it makes an impact. Deer prefer other plants, and rabbits stay away from our coral bells at Lurie. Stop by and enjoy the blooms.  They last until the first frost! Heuchera ‘Autumn Bride’ is available for purchase at our Fall Festival and Plant Sale this September 17th from 10:00 am to 3:00.

“What’s that smell?” is the most popular question from visitors at the Lurie Garden lately. The scent permeating the garden this Labor Day is often likened to buttered popcorn.  It comes from our prairie dropseed grass, Sporobolus heterolepis, an Illinois native.  This grass is characterized by long (up to 3 feet), 1/8-1/16 inch wide blades that reach about a foot hight and then cascade down like a fountain with tall spikelets of purple florets on long stems emerging from the clump. The scent is emanating from these flower panicles. The effect is like looking down onto a healthy crown of long hair topped with an elaborate headdress.  If you return in a few weeks, this already beautiful grass will develop a golden fall color that will persist through the winter. 

Saturday, Sept 17th we’re hosting our 1st ever Lurie Garden Fall Festival & Plant Sale.  Several superstar plants of the Lurie Garden will be available for purchase in our maintenance yard (located under the Nichols bridge) including our featured plant-of-the-weekend, calamint.  The calamint genus includes perennial plants with small, oregano-like leaves and a pleasing minty aroma. The native range is wide, with species in Europe, Middle-East, and North America. The leaves of many varieties of calamint are dried and used in Middle-Eastern cooking. Essential oil from this plant can be used to clear the sinuses. The name comes from the Greek, kala, meaning beautiful. Our beautiful Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta (native to Europe) grows in neat clumps that form a green mound in spring and maintains its rounded shape until mid-June when the flower spikes emerge from the tidy foliage. Calamint reaches about knee-high (1.5 ft) when in bloom. Unlike other mints, this sterile plant stays terrifically tame. 

Here's a fun bee-guided treck you can take in and around Millennium Park.

http://www.explorechicagotourism.com/?p=1364

One new bloom you can visit in the Lurie Garden is toad lily. This plant is native to Japan, but does well in the shady Dark Plate.  Here are some photos and gardening information on this plant from our Plants of the Lurie Garden section of our website.  http://luriegarden.org/node/715

Every plant in the Lurie Garden's design can be found on our site.

Culver’s root (Veronicastrum virginicum) provides the unexpected combination of strong structure and gentle airiness to the landscape.  The spikes of blooms are arranged in a candelabra shape and emerge from tidy foliage arranged in whorls around the length of sturdy stems. Culver’s root reaches 6 feet including the blooms which reach to 9 inches and last from July through late summer.  At LurieGarden we grow Veronicastrum virginicum ‘Diane’ a cultivar that attracts a variety of insects, including our honeybees.

Plants that encourage biodiversity are integral to the Lurie Garden’s plant palette.  A variety of winged creatures can be found clinging to the colorful, bottlebrush-like blooms of Agastache x ‘Blue Fortune.’  The lavender-blue, tubular-shaped flowers cover the long inflorescence in a whorled pattern. Be on the lookout for hummingbirds which are now migrating from Canada!  They are attracted to the tiny trumpet shape of the Agastache flowers.  Honeybees, butterflies, and other beneficial garden insects also collect its nectar. Anise hyssop, also called giant hyssop, is a common name for this plant due to its pleasing anise scent.  The downy leaves taste like licorice and are a refreshing addition to ice tea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruMcA2Y9bps&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

No plant in the Lurie Garden is more attractive to beneficial garden insects than blunt mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum). In late summer this plant dances with the busy flittering of honeybees, butterflies, beneficial wasps, and moths. The flat, white flowers are accented by fuzzy blue-green bracts. This 3 ft high plant spreads out into a tidy looking, flat mound which provides a nectar-filled landing pad for pollinators. Though in the mint family, blunt mountain mint doesn’t spread by rhizomes, so invasiveness isn’t a problem with this plant.  French botanist and friend of Thomas Jefferson, Andre Michaux found this plant in Pennsylvania in 1790 and named it Pycnanthemum or “densely flowered” from the Greek for dense (pyknos) and flowered (anthos). Muticum is Latin for blunt, referring to the flat bracts at the tops of each stem.  Blunt mountain mint is also native to all counties in Illinois, and really doesn’t grow in the mountains, so the common name is something of a mystery.  Blunt mountain mint prefers full to part sun and an alkaline soil and thrives in zones 4-8. 

http://www.wgntv.com/news/middaynews/middayfix/wgntv-midday-fix-lurie-ga...

Lurie Garden Tips:

Plant at least five plants of one variety to attract bees and supply pollen and nectar. If you have only a small space, talk to your neighbors or transform your parkway.

Plant a succession of plants that will flower throughout the seasons -- from spring to fall -- so honeybees have pollen and nectar over a long period of time.

Add blue and purple flowers, which are particularly attractive to honeybees.

Choose native plants that are preferred by honeybees, because genetically altered cultivars don't produce as much pollen and nectar.

Don't use pesticides. Honeybees are extremely sensitive to any pesticides, so garden in a natural way and refrain from using harsh chemicals.

Piet Oudolf designed the plantings here at Lurie Garden with the architectural element of each plant in mind.  Buttons, umbels, spires, globes, and plumes are just some of the shapes you will find at Lurie carefully chosen to provide interest in relation to the the perennials in each combination. Purpurlanze astilbe (Astilbe chinensis var. tarquetii ‘Purpurlanze’) was chosen for its showy, upright plumes. In July, each tight, neatly vertical inflorescence opens up like a feather duster freed from its casing. The light pink and mauve colors attract the attention of visitors, who reach out to touch the cushy blooms. The texture of each plume is reminiscent of old, hand-tufted chenille pillows. Its scent when in full bloom is dusty with pleasing floral notes, evoking memories of opening an antique attic trunk filled with of the accoutrements of some long ago special occasion.