Enjoy Your Visit — WALK THE GARDEN

SPRING 2010 IS COMING

Spring—and snow? With February 2010 sprinkling (or dumping) snow in 49 states (Hawaii was the single exception), including record-setting snowfalls in Texas, Washington, D.C., and a few borderline southern states, like Maryland, who can possibly predict when spring will arrive in our town? As much as we try to remember that spring does not always arrive with the calendar, accompanied by bird song, fragrant blossoms, or gentle zephyrs, we still can’t resist succumbing to that old black-magic brew of spring fever.

tulips Spring Arrives When?

Officially, the first day of spring 2010 is March 20, the vernal equinox, when the sun moves across the equator in such a way as to cleave equal hours of daylight and nighttime throughout the world. In the northern hemisphere, we anticipate this season of new life more than any other, and celebrate it (often long before it arrives) with flower and garden shows, pageants, and parades. In certain quarters, Mardi Gras and Carnival are synonymous with the advent of spring, as well as Easter. Once daylight savings turns our clocks ahead at 2 a.m. on March 14, we truly can see the light at the end of winter’s tunnel. The gradual lifting of light, coupled with a subtle change in the sun’s angle, reinforces the age-old feelings of hope, rebirth, and joy that define this teasing time.

Watch and Walk the Garden

Throughout the Garden’s 24 display gardens and three natural areas, it’s a challenge to keep up with the daily signs of spring that multiply quickly as sunlight and warming temperatures push back any lingering snow and expose tiny treasures. Just a few years ago, the Bulb Garden boasted snowdrops in January, earlier than ever before. Normally, they nod their bell-shaped white heads in time with yellow winter aconite, early crocus, and sapphire squill. Follow the Garden’s loyal cadre of early morning exercisers this month. They know the route—Bulb Garden, Regenstein Center, Home Landscape Gardens—to monitor for March flower spotting, just as the birders do the same in McDonald Woods and on the shores of the Lakeside Gardens.

flower First Flowers

The reliable blossoms of vernal witch hazel are usually the earliest woody blooms at the Garden. These late-winter or early spring flowers feature spiky, but very fragrant, yellow petals with red inner calyxes, sometimes coexisting with, and hidden by, last year’s dried leaves clinging to the branches over winter. Look carefully for them along the walkway to the Landscape Gardens. On sunny days, their petals should be open; on cloudy days, they will close up, a protection against cold and frost.

The Warmth of a Walled Garden

The sunlit brick walls of the English Walled Garden provide protection from March winds and late frosts, and the radiating warmth creates microclimates and encourages early blooms from tender plants like Lenten rose or bear claw hellebore. Check for flowers in unusual tones of apple green or dusty rose. Little bulbs, planted by the thousands here, will emerge this season in sequence, blooming first in the garden’s open sunny spaces. Joining the masses of tiny bulbs later in spring as they punctuate garden borders with form and color will be stately tulips, ornamental onions, fritillaries, and foxtail lilies.

tulips The Daffodils Trumpet!

No bulbs announce the arrival of warmer months in a more welcome manner than the Garden’s signature collection of Narcissus. Hundreds of thousands of them are massed outside the Garden Wall, on the open hillsides of Evening Island, Bird Island, in the parking lots, and throughout the interior gardens, where they peek through rich leaf compost before blooming in magnificent clumps of yellow, white, apricot, and orange. This is a bulb the Garden hugely recommends to local gardeners for its reliability, showmanship, and wildlife resistance!

Woodland Restoration Equals the Return of the Natives

The Garden’s conservation and restoration efforts are first visible in spring throughout McDonald Woods and along Lake Cook Road. By removing invasive plants such as buckthorn, garlic mustard, purple loosestrife, and more, the Garden allowed the return of native plants that once thrived here. Sunlight now filters to the woodland floor, encouraging entire communities of plants to develop. In spring, the resident raptors will soon be joined by flocks of migrating song birds, water and shoreline fowl, as well as other birds of prey, making the entire Garden, with its ideal combination of open water and diversity of plant material, one of the top birding spots in Chicagoland.

No season is more longed for, or dreamed about, than spring, perhaps because it rubs shoulders with the harshest months of the year. This spring, discover daily miracles and celebrate the plant world at the Garden in all its optimism, color, and beauty.