Stinkin’ Cool! New Designer Scents from Botanic Candle

New! Relive the thrill of cheering on Spike and Alice with our creative line of richly scented candles. A great gift for Mother’s Day, anniversaries, birthdays, and all the special people in your life.

Very Titan Berry gives new meaning to “fruit flavored.” It is very, very, very berry. Note, the scent may be too sophisticated for small children and pets. 

Eau de Titan Arum is spicy and surprisingly energizing. Recalls the electrifying moment when the titan arum blooms! Deeply organic and powerful enough to scent the whole house. 

Skunk Cabbage No 5 is a mysterious and musky scent. Guarantees that guests will flock to your candle like flies. 

Chicago Botanic Garden candle

Can you order online? Of corpse!
BUY NOW.

Tap into the power of plants, you will love these 
titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum) inspired scents.

©2016 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

Look, up in the sky: it’s the new PlantDropter™

Love spring, but hate all that heavy lifting in the garden?

Tell us about it! That’s why we developed the PlantDropter™, our new remote control planting assistant.

PHOTO: Drone quadcopter delivers a seedling to be planted.
PlantDropter™ is the intellectual property of the Chicago Botanic Garden

We tell it which plant we want to move, program the coordinates for a particular garden, and it does the carrying for us!

Staff is raving about the ability to travel “as the crow flies.” With 250,000 plants to put in this year, you can imagine the efficiency of the PlantDropter™! The only issue so far: it drops just one plant at a time.

That’s one down and 249,999 to go. We’ll keep you posted.

 

For more information or to order yours today, click here!

©2015 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

Easiest. Bonsai. Ever.

Introducing the world’s first effortless bonsai!

Why wait 5, 10, even 20 years for your bonsai to be perfect? With our new Chia® Bonsai kit, you can have a picture-perfect, healthy, brilliant green bonsai in days instead of decades!

Chia® Bonsai is as easy as 1-2-3! Created in the slant style, the trunk grows at an angle, and the crown is offset from the base.
Chia® Bonsai is as easy as 1-2-3! Created in the slant style, the trunk grows at an angle, and the crown is offset from the base.

The kit comes with everything you need: authentic-looking tree trunk base, saucer, moss—and, of course—thousands of chia seeds!

Immediate success sprouts in just days! The instructions that follow are simple:

  1. Purchase Chia® Bonsai kit at our Garden Shop.
  2. Moisten seeds with water, spread on tree, fill trunk with water, and position on saucer.
  3. Sit back and enjoy! Your Chia® Bonsai should sprout in just three days!

Watch for more easy Chia® Bonsai tree styles at our Garden Shop! 

 

For more information or to order yours today, click here!


©2015 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

Springvision comes to the Garden!

Are you tired of winter? Silly question—we all are. Spring is way overdue.

Cheer up! The Garden has an answer to the dragged-out-winter blues: Vertverre (green vision) glasses. Put on a pair of these specially designed glasses and you’ll see the drab landscape turn into a time when spring came six weeks early.

PHOTO: Google glasses showing a spring view through the prism, while the landscape is brown and wintry.
Using Google.AFD glass technology, the user’s experience of spring seems real.

Our sense of sight is a curious thing, and it can be manipulated to affect our outlook on the world. In the 1950s, a scientist created a set of vision-flipping goggles that made the world appear upside down. The first people who tested these glasses couldn’t even walk without stumbling when first wearing them. Eventually the brain adjusts, so that wearers see the world right side up again through the lenses. That is part of the scientific principle behind Vertverre.

Garden staff approached Google.AFD about this idea two years ago when we realized the wonderful health benefits of experiencing an early blooming spring. Google.AFD works with not-for-profit organizations like the Garden to develop tools and technology for a better world. While creating sense-altering vision seemed like a stretch, Google.AFD techies were already working on several devices to enhance retina viewing, so the partnership turned out to be a natural fit.

PHOTO: March view of the shoreline from the land bridge.
Vertverre™ technology turns the clock
forward, turning this…
PHOTO: May view of the shoreline from the land bridge.
…into this lush, verdant landscape.

How does Vertverre work? The lenses in these glasses send a signal to your retina, which transmits to your visual cortex, releasing a memory of that early blooming spring from years past. When you look at the landscape, Vertverre tricks your eyes into remembering spring flowers, green grass, from warmer times. The effect is so stunning that it has the same mood-enhancing effect as light therapy. Instantly you feel healthier and have a more positive outlook on life.

As the French philosopher Henri Bergson wrote: “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” Come visit the Garden and see for yourself. We only have a limited number of prototype models for our visitors and are taking reservations on a first come, first serve basis.

To reserve your pair click here today!

©2014 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org

 

Leave No Plant Inside

Remember when plant-care experts suggested that talking to your plants could make them healthier? New studies indicate that WALKING plants will keep your plants extra healthy, extra happy, and extra green. Perhaps you thought that dog-walking was just for dogs?

At the Chicago Botanic Garden we’ve been walking our plants for years—it’s one of the little-known reasons for our lush foliage and gorgeous flowers. Crews are out at the break of dawn around the Garden walking plants before the crowds arrive.

“All it takes is a wheelbarrow and a little patience,” says horticulturist Heather Sherwood. “I’ve never had a plant refuse a morning walk—but make sure temperatures are above freezing, and even warmer for tropical plants, before you take them out.”

PHOTO: Garden staff are moving a large wagon loaded with potted mums to be transplanted in the Circle garden.
Garden horticulturists know that walking the mums to the garden bed improves their blossoms.

Despite the groundhog’s forecast on February 2, spring’s arriving late this year, and temperatures have remained too cold to walk all but the hardiest native plants. Consider taking advantage of this week’s warmer air to get housebound plants moving now.

“It’s important for plants to get out and moving early in the season,” says plant scientist Dr. Pat Herendeen. “Movement and exercise open the stomata (tiny holes in the leaves that allow gas exchange), letting fresh air into the leaves. It gets the plant breathing and the sugars flowing, which improves their overall condition and promotes healthy flowering.”

PHOTO: Dr. Fant carries a fern and a pothos plants out of the Plant Conservation Science Center.
Dr. Jeremy Fant was among the first to take his plants for a stroll when the weather warmed up last week.

Health experts agree that a walk is good for you and your plants alike. For houseplant owners, there are plenty of plant-walking strategies. My neighbor combines the daily duties of dog walking with plant walking in a novel way. He saddles up his dog and attaches his smaller plants to the dog’s back. The two of them draw a lot of attention from other neighbors, and it’s easy to see why!

PHOTO: Dog is wearing a special coat that holds small house plants so he can take them for a walk
Enzo the dog doesn’t mind taking plants along on his regular walks.

If you don’t have a dog, you can carry your plants in a backpack, roll them in a wagon, or even pull them on a skateboard. Just getting them moving is the key. I don’t recommend recruiting your cat, however.

Remember for lush green happy plant results—keep those plants moving!

This was posted on April 1, 2013. April Fools!


©2013 Chicago Botanic Garden and my.chicagobotanic.org