Wildlife Features
The seasonal highlights are as follows: Spring highlights include - Star of Persia, Arkansas Blue Star, Wild White Indigo, Quamash, Shooting Star, Prairie Smoke, Virginia Bluebells, Herbaceous Peony, Phlomis, Meadow Sage, Burnet, and Tulip; Summer highlights include - Giant Hyssop, Ornamental Onion, Butterfly Weed, Purple Lance Astilbe, Calamint, Rusty Foxglove, Pale Coneflower, Daylily, White Blazing Star, Bee Balm, Oregano, and Culver's Root; Fall/Winter highlights include - Japanese Anemone, White Wood Aster, Northern Sea Oats, Tennessee Coneflower, Purple Love Grass, Rattlesnake Master, Bottle Gentian, Common Eulalia Grass, Red Switch Grass, Little Bluestem, Prairie Dropseed, and Toad Lily. The garden features dozens of types of perennials and bulbs. The garden features both ornamental and prairie grasses. It includes evergreen and deciduous shrubs. Its trees serve as its foundation. The wide variety of plant life has lured dozens of cottontail rabbits to the Garden and the surrounding park. The garden uses no synthetic pesticides.
60,000 and 42,000 bulbs were handplanted in 2006 and 2008, respectively. In 2009, 20,000 additional bulbs were planted, bringing the total to 120,000 and extending the flowering season earlier. The garden includes 35,000 perennials in 240 varieties and 5,200 "woody" plants in 14 varieties.
The dark plate's perennials include ferns, angelicas and other broad-leaved species, with a scattering of trees sprouting out of the flower beds. These plants thrive with shade from trees. The lush plants of this plate were selected by Oudolf as a tribute to Chicago's marshy beginnings. It is described as a thick wetland whose designers have described as "wild, naughty and hidden."
The light plate is dominated by prairie plants: grasses, coneflowers, prairie-smoke and no trees. These plants thrive in direct sunlight. This plate unites lighter native plants with imported specimens. It is described as a fine-textured upland whose designers have described as "clean, noble and prominent".
At the time of the 2004 opening of the Garden, the perennials were expected to need a year or two to mature and the hedges were expected to need another five to ten years to fill out. Another Tribune critic, Beth Botts, noted that the historical symbolism of the plantings is a future pleasure to be anticipated. However, she noted that it would be many years before the rosebud trees to the east could provide a pleasant shade. By the July/August 2010 issue of Garden Design, the garden was described as a garden in maturity worth revisiting.
Several animal species have been sighted in the garden. 27 species of birds have been identified in the park and its garden. Butterflies and bees have are among the wildlife that visit the garden.
Read more about this topic: Lurie Garden
Famous quotes containing the words wildlife and/or features:
“Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)