Windy City Harvest, the Chicago Botanic Garden’s urban agriculture education and jobs-training initiative, and its local partners were chosen as one of five finalists in the Food to Market Challenge.
As we all know, good soils are the key to growing any type of plant well: annuals, perennials, turf, shrubs, and trees. The Chicago region’s soils are twofold, having positive and negative virtues. On a positive note, our soils tend to be rich in nutrients. But on a negative note, our soils are heavy and do not drain well.
The soils at the Chicago Botanic Garden are very typical urban soils, and we have the same challenges. Over the years we have tried many types of amendments to improve our soils and are about to embark on another trial…biochar.
Biochar has been used for thousands of years in the Amazon Basin of South America to greatly improve poor, unproductive soils for farming. The ancient Amazons used a simple “slash-and-char” process to create biochar. This process involved cutting and burning plant material in an incomplete “smolder” style, rather than complete burn. They worked the charred material back into the soil as a long-lasting amendment. These amended soils in the Amazon have become known as “black earth” or terra preta. Amended terra preta soils created long ago still cover 10 percent of the Amazon Basin. It is important to understand that “slash and char” is different than “slash and burn,” which has many negative environmental implications, like deforestation. “Slash and char”sequesters large amounts of carbon in a stable form, unlike “slash and burn,” which releases the carbon into the atmosphere.
Biochar photo by K.salo.85 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
In the past decade, the use of biochar has been investigated for modern agricultural use; more recently in arboriculture, as well as general use in ornamental landscape plantings. The Morton Arboretum and Bartlett Tree Experts have conducted several recent research trials on biochar with very positive findings. One study found the root mass of test seedlings (honeylocust) grown with biochar was significantly more compared to their control group. Another study showed improvement in plant disease resistance when biochar was used.
So what exactly is modern-day biochar?
Biochar is similar to charcoal, except it is formulated specifically for soil enhancement. It is basically organic matter (primarily wood chips) heated in the absence of oxygen, a process called “pyrolysis.” The resulting char is carbon rich and has many long-lasting virtues. Think of it in the simplest of terms as a “sponge”: it has great capacity for holding and releasing nutrients and water.
What are the benefits?
Helps hold soil moisture, and release it in drought
Increases soil microbial activity
Holds and releases soil nutrients
Reduces leaching of nutrients and fertilizer
Studies have shown increased plant growth and rooting
Studies have shown less plant disease when it is used. (It is thought that the increased microbial activity stimulates specific microorganisms that play a key role in eliciting plant “systemic-induced resistance,” or SIR.)
Benefits of one application are long lasting, and it does not take a lot
Biochar is made from recycled materials, such as pines killed by bark beetles or trees damaged by fire
This year the Garden has begun to use biochar in some of our more troublesome areas. We don’t look at it as a “silver bullet,” but as another tool to combat problems caused by poor soils. This new tool is being trialed and then possibly integrated into our arsenal for best practice soil management.
Interested in a healthier, happier life? Try connecting with the natural world. A new, technologically advanced body of research shows that spending time in nature can provide protection against cancer, high blood pressure, depression, stress, and more.
Take a walk in nature to improve your mood and your health.
A recent National Geographic article noted that advances in neuroscience and psychology have provided scientists with more tools to look at the way nature affects our brains and bodies. According to the article, “These measurements—of everything from stress hormones to heart rate to brain waves to protein markers—indicate that when we spend time in green space, ‘there is something profound going on,’” said University of Utah cognitive psychologist David Strayer.
University of Illinois environment and behavior researcher Ming Kuo found that nature has the ability to enhance the functioning of the body’s immune system. “Nature doesn’t just have one or two active ingredients,” she told the university’s College News. “It’s more like a multivitamin that provides us with all sorts of the nutrients we need. That’s how nature can protect us from all these different kinds of diseases—cardiovascular, respiratory, mental health, musculoskeletal, etc.—simultaneously.”
Improve learning with time spent in the natural world.
Other studies show that nature is essential to the well-being of children. Children learn and focus better, and are healthier and more relaxed in green spaces, researchers say. In its national guidelines on encouraging nature play, the National Wildlife Federation says, “Nature play is defined as a learning process, engaging children in working together to develop physical skills, to exercise their imaginations, to stimulate poetic expression, to begin to understand the workings of the world around them.”
At the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Nature Play Garden, visitors of all ages and abilities can roll down hills, splash in water, hide in logs, and more.
Pokémon hunting in the Garden can be a great way to stop and take a closer look at some of the gardens while connecting with other visitors. Ordinarily, we love our visitors to enjoy our gardens with their senses, not their phones, but with the new Pokémon GO app, you can do both.
Tagging us on Facebook, Pokémon hunter Patricio28 shared these screen shots of the forest of PokéStops and Gyms at the Garden.
Essentially an app that lets you run around and catch Pokémon using GPS and the camera on your phone, Pokémon GO has taken over the imaginations of kids and adults alike since its recent release. The game is global—users can play anywhere in the world—and the Garden is one of the locations with many features for those using the game.
Nearly 50 PokéStops dot the Garden grounds, typically tied to sculptures and commemorative plaques embedded in walkways. In addition, six Gyms—virtual locations where players can train and battle their Pokémon—are currently found on-site.
But that’s not all that’s to be found: the gardens are a mass of blooms and butterflies, herons and hostas, and beautiful sunsets. The best of both worlds—real and virtual—is here.
The Circle Garden in summer
Two PokéStops can be found at the Circle Garden.
Hidden behind tall corn and sunflowers at the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden, Birds On Eggs by Sylvia Shaw Judson would ordinarily be missed in the height of summer, but as a PokéStop, visitors get to enjoy the sculpture and explore the path to the orchard behind it.
A Pokémon Gym location near Olivier Sequin’s Caricia sculpture takes visitors on a path less traveled behind the Farwell Landscape Garden.
As you discover the Garden and the Pokémon here, please keep these tips in mind:
Look up! Please always be aware of people around you, especially in the Visitor Center. This is a popular location to plant Lures, as people take a break and eat at the Garden View Café and on outdoor decks. When you find a Pokémon on a path or in a garden, please take a moment to look around you first—you want to frame your screen shot nicely, but you also don’t want to ruin the visitor experience for our other guests, who may not have any idea what you are doing with your phone.
Goldeen
Psyduck
Kakuna
Meowth
Walk away, and walk back. If the GPS signal stops or you can’t get to a particular PokéStop, just keep walking. There is probably another one close by that’ll spit out more PokéBalls, eggs, and potions.
The perimeter of the Garden is less crowded with Pokémon hunters, and it is a beautiful 2.3-mile walk. Hatch an egg or five while you take in the sights from afar. The Dixon Prairie is in full bloom, and the East Road offers a lovely vista of the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Japanese Garden. Visit the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center Green Roof Gardens (where a Pikachu was spotted earlier this week), and get back to the main gardens over the Trellis Bridge.
The Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Plant Conservation Science Center Rooftop, and its view of the Garden.
Find nighttime Pokémon as you picnic at our evening concerts. The Garden is open through 9 p.m. all summer, so stay late, and join us Monday through Thursday nights for open-air concerts at the Garden. Pack a picnic and some lawn chairs—and maybe an extra battery charger. Activate a lure in the app to attract Pokémon to one of the PokeStops nearby while you enjoy the music.
Get creative. The Garden is always a great place to take photos. Get creative by trying to screenshot your Pokémon frolicking on the grounds. Get a shot of Goldeen swimming in a fountain, position Pidgey on the branch of a Linden tree, or catch Charmander riding a train in the Model Railroad Garden. The photos are also a great way to remember what you saw in the Garden, since the app’s journal tells you when you caught certain Pokémon but not where. Use the photos as visual reminders of the places you enjoyed on your Pokémon hunt and as a way to mark what you’d want to experience further on a future visit, either on another virtual adventure or for an unplugged trek.
Tell us what you find. Grab a screen shot and tag us on social media with #CBGPokemonGO—we’d love to know what you find and share with our other visitors.
We have found that Meowth is almost always hanging around the entrance to the Garden, which is also a Gym location, as well as the path to the Visitor Center. Psyduck is usually on the southern end of the Garden, but a Golduck has been spotted by the Crescent Garden. There’s a lot of water here, so expect to catch Goldeen, Magicarp, Polliwag, Shellder, and Staryu. A garden is full of birds and bugs, and ours is no exception—Pidgey and Spearow abound; Weedle, Metapod, Caterpie, and Kakuna are out and about. Ratata can be found near buildings, of course, and Eevee can be found throughout the Garden. Dratini and Bellsprout were lurking here this morning.
Spring is traditionally the season that gardener friends and neighbors share plants. So when we noticed in late May that one of the 13 corpse flowers in the production greenhouse at the Chicago Botanic Garden was showing signs of sending up an inflorescence, we knew it was time to share.
We bid a fond farewell to titan arum no. 5 (now dubbed “Persephone”) on May 31, 2016. The titan traveled by truck to its new home at the Garfield Park Conservatory.
Wanting to spread the titan bounty and to make this amazing plant accessible to Chicagoans from all parts of the city, the Garden turned to our friends at the Garfield Park Conservatory.
Titan arums hail from the rainforests of Sumatra, and therefore need the high humidity and controlled warmth of a greenhouse. (Check: the Conservatory’s Jens Jensen-designed greenhouses include an Aroid House with lagoon.) The plants are notoriously slow to reach the flowering stage and unpredictable when they do—careful horticultural monitoring is a must. (Check: we heart horticulturists.) And the Conservatory is located mere steps from Garfield Park’s beautifully renovated Green Line “L” stop, the city’s most central and accessible train line (super check).
Traveling in the city? Take the Green Line directly to the restored Conservatory–Central Park Drive “L” station.
For the Garden’s horticulture team, it has been a labor of love to raise “titan no. 5” to this stage. Grown from seed sent in 2008 by the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, the plant had developed the largest known corm in the Garden’s collection. When it was repotted in December 2015, the corm weighed in at 48.2 pounds and measured 16 inches wide and 12 inches tall. Through careful propagation and much TLC, the horticulture staff had coaxed this corpse flower toward opening in just eight years—a fairly short time frame in the life cycle of a titan.
Mary Eysenbach, director of conservatories at the Chicago Park District, and her team at the Conservatory were thrilled to accept the gift of a titan arum, especially one nearing its first bloom. Dubbed “Persephone,” the plant was installed in the Aroid House, where it has been happily growing…and growing…among the Chihuly glass sculptures, reaching 69 inches in height by Thursday, June 16.
All signs now point to the corpse flower opening soon: slowing growth, reddening of the spathe, drying of the bracts. (Read more about the life cycle of titan arums on our blog.)
A titan arum’s inflorescence opens for a short time—just a day or two—and emits a powerfully stinky smell for the first few hours, as the female flowers inside put out the call for pollinators.
If you saw Spike or Alice or Sprout at the Chicago Botanic Garden—or heard about “that stinky flower” through the news or social media—you know what a rare, amazing, sensational phenomenon a corpse flower can be. Increasingly rare in the wild, a flowering titan is a sight to behold, and a wonderful way to learn more about the astounding lives of the world’s plants.
We’re proud to share a titan arum with the Garfield Park Conservatory, and encourage everyone to visit, watch, and smell as its inflorescence opens.
