Lurie Garden
Lurie Garden in Millennium Park combines naturalistic plantings and ecologically sensitive maintenance practices to create an urban oasis for city dwellers and wildlife alike.
An urban model of responsible horticulture, Lurie Garden provides a healthy habitat for a wide variety of plants, animals, and insects. Lurie Garden is a leader in landscape architecture, garden design, responsible maintenance practices and engaging educational events in an urban environment.
The garden offers a four-season experience blending Chicago’s past, present and future with bold design, dramatic form, and intimate spaces. Its design pays homage to Chicago’s transformation from flat marshland to a city heralded for investing in extensive green spaces, or “Urbs in Horto” (City in a Garden).
Visitors find respite and inspiration in four seasons. In early spring, sun-hungry bulbs and perennials stretch through soil and begin anew. Summer and fall teem with the flutter of butterflies and birds. Winter’s seed heads and ornamental grasses capture snow and ice, creating graceful art forms. Lurie Garden is living art – a palette of texture and color blending Chicago’s unique culture, ecology, history and people.
Highlights of the garden include the dramatically lit, 15-foot-high “shoulder” hedge. This physical representation of Carl Sandburg’s famous description of the “City of Big Shoulders” encloses the garden on two sides and protects the delicate perennial garden. A graceful hardwood footbridge over shallow water divides the garden diagonally between “light” and “dark” plates.
Lurie Garden is supported by a $10 million endowment gift, made to the Millennium Park Foundation, by the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation. Lurie Garden is part of Millennium Park and the Garden’s horticultural maintenance and operations is the responsibility of the Millennium Park Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization dedicated to the stewardship of Millennium Park.
Short video tour:
Lurie Garden in the Spring
Short video tour:
Lurie Garden in the Beginning of Summer
Lurie Garden with Piet Oudolf
In this film by Tom Rossiter, Piet Oudolf talks about some of the plants he chose for the Lurie Garden and what they bring to the composition.