May 2018 – Page 2 – My Chicago Botanic Garden

It’s finally spring (and practically summer) weather these days at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and we’re bursting to get outside, and get growing.

In just a few weeks, we’ll have the perfect chance to do just that. At Get Growing Weekend on May 18 to 20, gardeners will gather for gardening demonstrations, a spring marketplace, and a one-of-a-kind plant sale to celebrate the much-anticipated arrival of spring.

Learn more about Get Growing Weekend

Part of the weekend’s festivities include a specialty plant sale hosted by The Woman’s Board of the Chicago Horticultural Society. On Friday, members of the Garden will enjoy early access to the plant sale from noon to 4 p.m.; the plant sale will open to the public on Saturday and Sunday. A highlight of the sale is the “potted paradise” selection, which features composed planters grown on-site and designed by horticultural celebrities, as well as our own staff and Woman’s Board members.

We couldn’t wait to get a sneak peek, so we talked with celebrated designer Bunny Williams of Bunny Williams Interior Design about her potted paradise design.

Q: Describe your process for designing your container this year. What makes a good container?

A: One of the things I’m always thinking about when I’m doing a container is height. When you first plant a container, all of the plants are very small. But a month later when they’ve grown in, they’re at their full profusion. They look quite different. You have to think in advance about plants growing to varying heights. For instance, I always like to have something that hangs over the sides of the container, like the Silver Falls dichondra (Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’) that I’ve included in my Potted Paradise container. And then something that stands tall, like the Mystic Spires Improved salvia (Salvia ‘Balsamispim’).

Q: What colors work well in a container?

A: I always like to use a simple color palette in containers. For this one, it’s all about shades of purple, black, and green. It makes for a more effective container than if you try to put too many colors in it. In your garden, you often mix containers together, so if you have containers with their own color schemes situated next to each other, you can have a more controlled color scheme overall.

Q: How do you use texture in your containers?

A: You don’t want every leaf to be exactly the same. In my Potted Paradise container, there are six plants, each with different leaf textures. I chose Mystic Spires Improved salvia (Salvia ‘Balsamispim’), Pinball™ globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa ‘Pinball Purple’), Primo™ Black Pearl coral bells (Heuchera ‘Black Pearl’), Solar Power™ sweet potato vine (Ipomoea batatas ‘Black Improved’), Silver Falls dichondra (Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’), and Kent Beauty oregano (Origanum rotundifolium ‘Kent Beauty’). The different textures set the plants off when you see the relationship between the different foliage. It makes the container more interesting if something is not in bloom.

Mystic Spires Blue Improved salvia — *Salvia* ‘Balsamispim’ Mystic Spires Blue™ Improved

Silver Falls dichondra — *Dichondra* ‘Silver Falls’

Container featuring Kent Beauty oregano — *Origanum* ‘Kent Beauty’; photo by Paul S. Drobot

Q: What’s the best thing about planting containers?

A: What’s interesting and fun about containers is you have to know a little bit about what each plant is going to do. The salvia is tall, and so I know that will be the centerpiece of my container. When you go to the nursery, I enjoy making a grouping right there in the store. You can see the textures together, and choose what makes sense based on a few basic principles: leaf texture, differentiation, and colors of the same family.

April definitely did not go out like a lamb this year. You probably didn’t put away your sweater until the end of the month, when temperatures finally hit 80 degrees.

Here at the Chicago Botanic Garden, we recorded our coldest April ever since we started recording temperatures in 1982. Our average high temperature in April was 48.1, which is 8.7 degrees below normal.

What did the cold weather mean for our plants?

Luckily, nothing devastating. Early bloomers, like winter aconite, crocus, and snowdrops, weren’t affected, and many bloomed as expected. Those species can also tolerate the colder temperatures we saw in April. If we had seen a few days of high temperatures and some of the more delicate flowers had opened, followed by a subsequent freeze, that would most likely have damaged plants.

May (and later) bloomers are also probably going to arrive on schedule. But plant species that usually bloom in April took their time. Celeste Vandermey, supervisor of plant records, checked to see how late some perennials and trees were this year. On average, most were about two weeks late, with a few outliers taking even longer than usual:

Saucer magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana) in bloom — Saucer magnolia (*Magnolia* × *soulangeana*)

Magnolias: Usually, these start to bloom during the first two weeks of April. This year, we didn’t see flowers start to open until the first week of May.

Nanking cherry (Prunus tomentosa) in bloom — Higan Cherry (*Prunus subhirtella* ‘Autumnalis’)

Cherries: Mid-April is prime time for cherries here. They have their own festival in Washington D.C. and this year reached their peak there in the first week of April. Our cherries waited until early May.

Red oak (Quercus rubra) leaves emerging — Red oak (*Quercus rubra*) leaves emerging

Native trees: McDonald Woods is home to many native trees, including oaks and maples, which usually start to leaf between April 8-15. But this year leaves didn’t start to appear until May as well.

Gold Tide forsythia (Forsythia 'Courtasol') in bloom — Gold Tide® forsythia (*Forsythia ‘Courtasol’)*

Forsythia: Since the Garden began to keep track of first blooms on our grounds more than 25 years ago, this is the latest we’ve ever seen forsythia bloom.

Late bloomers have now all started to exit their winter dormancy. Their tardiness does not mean other species will continue to be late. Once temperatures remain above freezing and the soil warms up, which seems to have begun, most species will do their thing at their expected time. It’s safe to—finally—say spring has arrived.

Next up: Redbuds
(Cercis canadensis)

Check out the Garden’s What’s in Bloom Highlights every Monday and Thursday for new selections of plants that are putting on a beautiful show, and where to find them.

Month: May 2018

Planting Spring Containers With a Designer’s Eye

Cold April delays some blooms, but now the spring show is on