July 2014 – Page 2 – My Chicago Botanic Garden

Pruning the Linden Allée

This summer, when you stop by for ice cream at the Rose Terrace Café, be sure to look UP—and marvel at the incredible trees above you. These 28 GREENSPIRE™ linden trees (Tilia cordata ‘PNI 6025’), a cultivar of littleleaf linden, are actually pruned into a 270-foot-long hedge!

PHOTO: Cindy Baker and Guillermo Patino — Couldn’t resist a selfie with Guillermo in the lift!

Littleleaf lindens are native to Europe, central Russia, and western Asia. They are relatively disease-resistant and low-maintenance trees. Their dense canopy provides ample shade for a hot summer day, and the heart-shaped leaves turn an outstanding gold color in the fall. They have a very symmetrical conical shape, strong central leader, and can reach a height of over 50 feet when mature—a great landscape tree for the Chicagoland region!

Twice a year, working carefully, twig by twig, a crew of four to five staff members from the Grounds Department prunes all 28 trees in the Linden Allée to precise measurements—once in the winter for shaping, and once in the summer for detail grooming. The design is very uniform and creates a formal allée of trees. The sides are pruned at a slight, almost imperceptible angle, and are 4 inches narrower at the top than at the bottom. This allows sunlight to reach all of the leaves, while still visually appearing to be straight, not slanted. The undersides of the trees are pruned level, and even the tops of the trees are pruned into a perfectly flat hedge shape.

PHOTO: Traffic jam in the Linden Alleé—lift versus tram. — Here comes the tram! Time to back the lift out of the Allée again.

PHOTO: Taking a break with a view of the Japanese Garden: the right side (and back left of the Alleé) after pruning—still more to do! — Taking a break with a view of the Malott Japanese Garden: the right side (and back left of the Allée) after pruning—still more to do!

Guillermo Patino, who has been with the Garden for more than 20 years, is the crew leader for this project. He is an expert at maneuvering the large aerial lift in and around all of the trees, as even the back sides of each tree must be pruned. And then, once every hour, he hears over the radio, “The tram is coming!” He moves his giant machine out of the way, allows the tram and visitors to pass, and then at the blazing speed of 2 miles per hour, drives back down to his work area to continue his pruning.

An interesting and unique characteristic of linden trees is that they are very tolerant of heavy pruning, making them the perfect candidate for hedging, espalier, and bonsai.

This work takes the staff more than 500 hours to complete over a period of two full weeks. A big project at the Chicago Botanic Garden, but the finished product is well worth the effort!

Chicago Botanic Garden and University of Chicago partner in bid for Obama library

All the possibilities for the Obama Library plus our Windy City Harvest Youth Farm are featured in the Chicago Tribune today! Read about it in Community groups pin hopes on Obama library (PDF).

Click here to download a PDF of this article.

10 Romantic Getaways at the Garden

It’s a warm summer evening, and you’re at the Chicago Botanic Garden with someone special. The food’s been great, and the music sounds terrific…time to grab his/her hand and head out for a romantic stroll.

Dance outdoors on weeknights! Enjoy swing, Latin jazz, samba, bluegrass, big band, country, rock ’n’ roll, and salsa.

For the complete lineup of music on summer evenings, click here.

Be guided by the GardenGuide app.

Think of it as a personal docent: access our Garden app for fun/interesting tours around the grounds.

Find the places where the two of you can hear the music across the water, take in a different view, and have a bench all to yourselves. Our top ten hideaways at the Garden:

Stop and smell the roses. In between the entrance to the Krasberg Rose Garden and the Linden Allée is a tiny terrace, tucked behind a hedge. The chairs there are perfect for taking in the scent of the thousands of roses in summer bloom.
Where light dances on water. In summer, the bridges to Evening Island—the Arch Bridge, the Serpentine Bridge—are lit at night. You can spend hours watching the reflections in the water.
Around the council rings. On Monday nights, the Carillon Concerts sound incredible from either of the council rings on Evening Island. Pack a picnic to eat at the Nautilus terrace, then head up either hill, and enjoy the sound.
Get there before 6 p.m. While the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden stays open just until 6 p.m., it’s worth the early walk to sit out at the grape arbor’s overlook and take in the fountain view back toward the Esplanade.
The pre-sunset prairie. Long summer evenings mean long summer walks: out in Dixon Prairie, the plants grow taller than your head late in the season, and the light filters through the grasses as the sun lowers in the sky.
Have you discovered the Kleinman Family Cove yet? We think the Cove is one of the prettiest places at the Garden in the evening—perfect for listening to the natural chorus of frogs, birds, and insects.
A view to the east. Turn left at the top of the Dwarf Conifer Garden stairs and head up the path—the bench at the crest has a stunning view of the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Japanese Garden.
Where white flowers bloom. McGinley Pavilion is always planted with wedding-appropriate white flowers—beautiful and fragrant in the evening, and a lovely spot to sit near the water.
The Circle Garden’s secret gardens. There’s a pair of them, one on each side of the Circle Garden. You’re just steps away from the Regenstein Center, but it feels like miles away…
The Pergola Garden at the English Walled Garden. Bubbling fountains, hanging wisteria, and a bench that’s painted the quintessential blue…perfect place for a selfie of the two of you.

Roses That Say Love

The Krasberg Rose Garden is naturally romantic. As with fine wines, the descriptive words for roses are rich and varied. Among the 5,000-plus rose bushes planted are some that speak the language of love through their names.

PHOTO: Love rose. — **‘Love’**—Big. Scarlet. Fragrant. The very definition of a romantic rose.

PHOTO: Tiffany rose. — **‘Tiffany’**—Rosy pink, strong fragrance, and the perfect name for a proposal.

PHOTO: Love and Peace rose. — **‘Love and Peace’**—A beautiful combination: yellow, edged in pink. And that fragrance!

PHOTO: Starry Night rose. — **Starry Night™**—Five pure white petals sparkle like the stars in your true love’s eyes.

In Victorian times, red roses said “love,” pink roses said “like,” and yellow roses said “friend me”—or close enough.

Some roses speak of love through scent. American historian Alice Morse Earle writes the following in “Old Time Garden”: “The fragrance of the sweetest rose is beyond any other flower scent, it is irresistible, enthralling; you cannot leave it.” Breathe deeply, and perhaps you’ll detect myrrh, musk, apple, cinnamon, grape, damask, lemon, vanilla, pepper, pine…and, of course, tea, one of the richest of rose scents.

PHOTO: Rosa 'Jacarque'. — **Honey Perfume™**—The perfect name for a strongly spicy, apricot-yellow rose

PHOTO: Rosa 'Jactanic'. — **Moondance™**—The clusters of clear white flowers give off the scent of raspberries.

PHOTO: Rosa x odorata 'Lover's Lane'. — **‘Lover’s Lane’**—A rich red cultivar of *Rosa* × *odorata*, the genus of all tea-scented Chinese roses

PHOTO: Rosa 'AUSbord'. — **Gertrude Jekyll**— The classic scent of old roses is strong in this big, ruffly, old-fashioned rose.

Is there a more beautiful background than the Rose Garden? Two-thirds of visitors take photos here.

Finally, some roses have romantic stories to tell. The Portland rose (Rosa ‘Comte de Chambord’) was a gift to the Empress Josephine, who established the greatest rose garden of its time at Malmaison. The cabbage rose (Rosa x centifolia), known as the “100-petaled rose,” is a beloved subject and symbol in Dutch still-life paintings. Autumn Damask rose (Rosa ‘Autumn Damask’), is an Old Garden Rose with a 3,000-year-old connection to the cult of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Take an evening stroll through the roses, and find romance in the Rose Garden.

Summer Bulbs

Spring is done and we’ve finally moved into summer bulb season! The annual beds have been replanted with sweeps of dahlias, cannas, caladium, and begonias to showcase these nonstop workhorses of the summer garden.

PHOTO: Caladium plantings under the crabapples. — *Caladium bicolor* ‘Raspberry Moon’, *Begonia* ‘Million Kisses Honeymoon’ and Cretan brake fern (*Pteris cretica*) light up the shade under the Selkirk crabapples.

PHOTO: A raised planting of caladium and begonia under a tree offer a chance to sit in the shade. — *Caladium bicolor* ‘Miss Muffet’ and *Begonia* × *tuberhybrida* ‘Illumination White’ make a great pairing for shady areas.

On the perennial side of things, we’re moving into lily season. The very first lilies to bloom are the martagon lilies (Lilium martagon) and their hybrids (such as Lilium martagon ‘Mrs. R.O. Backhouse’). Martagon lilies are terrific plants for the shade garden because they provide both structure and color at a time when little else is blooming in the shade. The leaves emerge in a layered whorl, giving the plants a pagoda-like structure. We’re also moving into Asiatic lily season with the first of those beginning to bloom in bold shades of pink, red, yellow, and orange.

PHOTO: The orange blooms of a martagon lily poke up through a bed of hosta. — *Lilium* ‘Nepera’ is a vibrant orange martagon hybrid that lights up a shady corner.

PHOTO: Foxtail lilies poke up from a planting of bayberry. — Pale yellow foxtail lilies (*Eremurus* ‘Lemon Meringue’) provide a fun summer surprise when planted among shrubs such as this bayberry (*Myrica pensylvanica*).

In addition to the lilies, we’re also seeing some unusual bulbs such as Eremurus ‘Lemon Meringue’ in bloom. Eremurus have tall, bottle brush-like flowers that add an exotic flair to the garden. Smaller alliums such as Allium tanguticum ‘Balloon Bouquet’ and Allium senescens do not have the giant flower heads of their springtime relatives, but still provide a welcome change of pace from the more common flowers of summer.