How High’s the Temperature Papa?

She said it’s 8° and Rise’n

A cold, but sunny, New Year’s Eve.  A temperature of 8° with some overnight snow .. the morning sun, low in the winter sky, made everything glisten.  A good day for hot chocolate and a couple of Johnny Cash albums on the turntable.

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A scattering of tree trimmings, drying out for a future bonfire

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Tree trimmings ready for a spring project – what to construct with these?

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An organic art installation – eat your heart out Morton Arboretum

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‘Annabelle’ Hydrangea, a native cultivar adding interest to the winter garden

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Wild Quinine still standing strong with caps of snow

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Rudbecka laciniata – Golden Glow, the finches love the seeds, I love their drama

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Switchgrass – still young, but looking good and catching some rays

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The birds are not hungry enough to eat the asparagus berries yet

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Some winterized Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus strumosus

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Oh my, Pennisetum ‘Hameln’ .. a non-native charmer

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Bits of unearthed construction debris stacked for a future project

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Granite cobbles, as art, until needed for some other use

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Neptune does not look happy – he never does, but he still makes me smile

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White Pines and Cup-plant – lovely in winter too

When nature surrounds your home, there is always something that inspires awe – a kiss of winter sunbeams and a dusting of snow makes it all a bit more magical.

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Happy New Year copy


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Piet Oudolf’s Lurie Garden at Millennium Park

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The Lurie Garden, opened in 2004, is located at the southeast corner of Chicago’s Millennium Park.  The garden covers approximately 2.5 acres of the 24.5 acre park.  The design of the garden resulted from an international competition, the winning team consisted of the Seattle based landscape architect, Kathryn Gustafson; lighting and set designer, Robert Israel, and Dutch nurseryman and landscape designer, Piet Oudolf.  Gustafson and Israel designed the shapes of the beds, water feature, pathway locations, and other hardscape elements.  Oudolf created the planting plan, with the help of Wisconsin nurseryman Roy Diblik, co-owner of Northwind Perennial Farm, where most, if not all, of the perennials for The Lurie Garden were contract grown.

For more about the symbolism of the garden elements, including the underlying meaning of the surrounding hedge, and what the light and dark plates represent, you can visit Wikipedia.  I’m particularly interested in, and will be discussing, the plants used in the garden and how they were laid out as a composition.

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As I earlier eluded, the garden consists of a Light Plate (sunny garden) and a Dark Plate (shady garden) with a seam (water coarse with parallel boardwalk) separating the two, and all of it surrounded on two sides, to the west and north, by a 12 foot tall hedge of evergreen arborvitae and deciduous beech and carpinus trees, with Monroe Street and Columbus Drive bordering the south and east sides.

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The gardens contain more than 35,000 perennials, 5,200 trees and shrubs, and at least 120,000 spring flowering bulbs.  A more or less complete list of plants can be found here and here.

Along Monroe Street; Baptisia ‘Purple Smoke’, with its big mound of blue-green leaves; tall Joe-Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum) topped with domes of pink flowers; and the somewhat lost, Moor Grass, Molinia ‘Transparent’ with its airy (hence the name) flowers, fight for real estate.  As a groundcover, purple ajuga is used with Clematis integrifolia using the tall plants as a living trellis.

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Clematis integrifolia, shown below, climbing over a baptisia, blooms from mid to late summer with understated (unlike many spring flowering clematis. Yes, I’m talking to you jackmanii) blue flowers.  The fuzzy seed heads, also visable in the photo, add fall and winter interest to the garden.

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Six foot tall stalks rise from the Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum).  Birds, especially finches, relish the seeds produced by the bright yellow flowers.  Prairie Dropseed grass and Purple Love Grass along with White Echinacea and Rattlesnake Master intermingle with the Compass Plant.

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The blue-green leaves of False Blue Indigo ‘Purple Smoke’ (Baptisia sp.) complement the strappy, silver-green leaves of the Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium) with its spiky gray flowerheads rising above its leaves.

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The airy flower stalks of Molinia ‘Transparent’, Moor Grass, along with the pinky-purple flowers of Joe-Pye-Weed ‘Purple Bush’ mingle together in the “dark plate” of the garden.  In the distance, Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ Grass shows off its straw colored seed heads.

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Autumn Moor Grass (Seslaria autumnalis) massed in a corner of the “Dark Plate,” shows off its late summer flower spikes and its bright green foliage next to Hosta ‘Royal Standard’ with the white spikes of Culver’s Root ‘Diane’ showing behind them.

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A bright blue mass of  Scutellaria incana (Skullcap) in the “Dark Plate”

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Separtating the two “Plates” is the “Seam,” a shallow body of water along a boardwalk made of Ipe wood from South America.  The stream of water steps down towards Monroe Street, creating small waterfalls.  A quiet, peaceful place to sit and soak your feet …

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… While 200 feet to the west, the under-ten-crowd had their own idea of what a water feature should be ..

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giant faces spitting water into a very shallow reflecting pool, otherwise know as the Crown Fountain, but I digress.

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Back to the Light Plate of the Lurie Garden.  Here, Autumn Moor Grass catches the sunlight, with Calamint (Calamentha nepeta susp. nepeta).  Calamint is a great filler species, long blooming (bracts remain showy) and complements other perennials such as coneflowers, Alliums, daylilies, and grasses to name a few.

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On its west and north flanks, the garden is enclosed by “The Shoulder Hedge” consisting of a steel framework planted to Beech, Carpinis, and Arborviatae.  Beyond, rises the Modern Wing of The Art Institute of Chicago.  The walkways in the garden are granite pavers cut from countertop scraps.  Originally, the pathways were made of crushed stone.

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The designer of the garden, Piet Oudolf, wants us to see beauty in the garden, beyond the flower.  When creating a planting plan, he looks at the plant’s shape, texture, and color, so that even after a plant is finished blooming, the garden still looks good, overall.  The following pictures of the garden reflect that thought process.  ENJOY:

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Tennessee Coneflowers and Allium ‘Summer Beauty’ in combination, surrounded by Amsonia hubrichtii, Baptisia, Russian Sage, and Rattlesnake Master

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Bright green Amsonia hubrichtii with ‘Chicago Apache’ Daylily and ‘Shenendoah’ Switchgrass

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While the blue mid-summer blooms of the salvia have faded to brown, they still complement the silver of the Rattlesnake Master combined with the blue of Russian Sage.

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The seed heads of the Blazingstar and Purple Coneflower still hold interest, while the Purple Love Grass and the blue Sea Lavender bring in accents of color.

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As the white bracts of the calamint start to turn a lavender color, the Blue Bottle Gentian, growing with it, will be in spectacular bloom – one of many thoughtful plant combinations

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The great mound of calamint mimics the Pritzker Pavilion beyond the hedge

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The massing of various Blue Salivias is tranquil and understated in August, but is a river of blue in Mid-summer

 

 

 

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Roy Diblik Designed Garden at The Grand Geneva Resort & Spa

 

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Opened in 1968 as a Playboy Club Hotel, the Frank Lloyd Wright inspired architecture of The Grand Geneva Resort & Spa lends itself well to the Roy Diblik designed entry garden.  Installed in 2005/06, the garden evokes a Midwestern meadow full of bright flowers and billowing grasses.  While not all of the 20+ species of perennials in this garden are native to the Midwest, most are not, Roy has shown, that “it doesn’t have to be all natives” to be sustainable.  The garden does reflect a growing need for sustainable landscape design and creates an emotional connection for the viewer through “Representation of Place,” as Roy puts it.

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According to Roy, ecological plantings are where landscape design needs to be.  He would like to see an end to monocultures of Black-eyed-Susans and Purple Coneflowers, which too often leads to disease and death, as well as the “weed, woodchip, and replace” mantra of the landscape industry.  Instead, he would like to see well designed landscapes, consisting of stable communities of plants, that are sustainable and create a pleasant garden.

Roy Diblik’s plantings are dense enough that weeds cannot compete with the perennials.  He also believes in keeping the soil lean:  “A lean soil supports fewer weeds.”  Additionally,  he feels that adding wood chips is not something that promotes plant health in perennials and should not be needed if they are happily growing in “closed, stable, communities.”   He does, however, occasionally use leaf mulch in some of his gardens, for example, his gardens at the Art Institute of Chicago get an application of leaf mulch every three years.

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As can be seen in this garden, Roy keeps the plant palette limited (I counted approximately 20 species of plants), repeats many of the plants throughout the garden, and chooses plants the “respect their space.” 

Roy has mentioned in his presentations, that the designer needs to consider the size and habit of the plants 3 to 5 years after planting, and that gardens need two years of nurturing, before gardening can begin.  The old horticultural saying about perennials is that the first season, they “sleep,” the second year, they “creep,” and the third year, they “leap.”  Roy plants in expectation of the third year, and beyond.  But he is not a believer in “one and done,”  rather, a garden (or landscape project) should be thought of in phases, and changes or additions should be planned for, in time.

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In the above picture we see approximately a half dozen perennials repeated, each grouping knitted into the next, not simply one grouping next to another grouping.  In the foreground, Allium angulosum  ‘Summer Beauty’ ties into the yellow ‘Happy Returns’ Daylily, which in turn runs into the purples of various Veronicas.  The seed heads of June blooming giant allium bulbs are still visable, and are part of the aesthetic of the garden.  The bright green grass, Sesleria autumnalis,  Moor Grass, fronts the walkway in the bed at left and complements the blue-green leaves of the Catmint, Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta, behind it.  The Catmint as well at the ‘Summer Beauty’ Allium can be seen repeating in the rear of this image, as well.  Spots of Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’ add a touch of royal purple to the mix.

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In the largest section of the garden, the mixture of ‘Summer Beauty’ and Catmint can be seen with a large swath of purple ‘Hummelo’ behind, along with the taller Purple Coneflower, the misty blue Russian Sage, and the yellows of the ‘Happy Returns’ Daylilies, Coreopsis, and Achillea.  In the distant background is Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’  Feather Reed Grass.  Various blue Salvias, past flowering in this photo, played a major color roll, earlier in the season.  Plant shape, texture, and height play as much of a roll in this composition as does the color of the flowers.

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Above, Sesleria autumnalis,  Moor Grass; Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta,  Catmint; Salvia‘Blue Hill;’ and  Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo,’ growing together as part of a happy and beautiful plant community.

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Sporobolis heterolepis,  Prairie Dropseed Grass; Allium angulosum,  ‘Summer Beauty;’ and Echinacea purpurea,  Purple Coneflower, intermingle nicely along the walkway.

 

The Plants Seen in Roy Diblik’s Garden

at The Grand Geneva Resort & Spa:

·        Achillea x hybrida  ‘Coronation Gold’ ‘Inca Gold’  Yarrow

·        Allium angulosum  ‘Summer Beauty’ Allium

·        Allium purpureum bulbs

·        Allium schoenoprasum ‘Schnitlauch’ Dwarf Chives

·        Amsonia orientalis ‘Blue Ice’

·        Baptisia sphaerocarpa,  Yellow Indigo

·        Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’  Feather Reed Grass

·        Calamintha nepeta ssp. nepeta,  Catmint

·        Coreopsis palmata,  Prairie Coreopsis

·        Coreopsis verticillata  ‘Golden Showers,’ ‘Moonbeam’

·        Echinacea purpurea,  Purple Coneflower 

·        Geranium x hybrida ‘Orion’  Hardy Geranium

·        Hemerocallis x hybrida  ‘Happy Returns’ Daylily

·        Kalimeris incisa ‘Blue Star’

·        Perovskia atriplicifolia,  Russian Sage

·        Rudbeckia fulgida,  Black-Eyed-Susan

·        Salvia  ‘Wesuwe,’  ‘Blue Hill,’ ‘East Friesland’

·        Sesleria autumnalis,  Moor Grass

·        Sporobolis heterolepis,  Prairie Dropseed

·        Stachys officinalis ‘Hummelo’

·        Veronica sp.  Speedwell

 

 

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