Lurie Garden Celebrates 20 Years of Diverse, Naturalistic Plantings in Chicago

A September walk through Lurie Garden, located in Chicago’s Millennium Park, will reward visitors with spikes of bubblegum pink flowers called rough blazing star, along with the low-lying, deep-purple blooms of bottle gentian. These Illinois natives are among 340 different plant types in the 2.5-acre perennial garden. Several years ago, the garden added a space along Monroe and Columbus streets, teeming with native shrubs and trees.

Native grasses shine in September at Lurie Garden - Photo by Lurie Garden/Millennium Park Foundation

“The Lurie Garden is seen as one of the art features of Millennium Park,” says Kathryn Deery, head horticulturist. “But it is different because it’s a living work of art.”

Since it opened in 2004, the garden “has become more complex, more diverse and more interesting,” she continues. It’s considered a green roof garden because it sits atop a network of underground parking garages, walkways and train lines. The soil depth is only 4 feet.

More than 40 percent of the plants are native to North America, and more than 25 percent are native to Illinois. The garden includes trees, shrubs, bulbs, perennial plants and grasses, serving as inspiration to visitors to incorporate natives into their own yards. It also features cultivars that thrive in gardens and attract insects.

Asters and goldenrods bloom in September at Lurie Garden. - Photo credit Lurie Garden/Millennium Park Foundation

The perennial plant design was created by Piet Oudolf, a leader in naturalistic planting and new perennial garden design. Oudolf, along with GGN, a landscape architect firm, won a competition to design the garden. Oudolf continues to work as a consultant.

“What Piet does so successfully is that he intimately studies each individual plant,” Deery explains. “He understands what they look like through their entire cycle, from emerging in spring and through winter. He cares about every point of the plant’s life cycle.”

In a film by Tom Rossitor titled The Oudolf Gardens, Oudolf explains that when he won the competition and was commissioned to design the garden, he studied nearby prairies and wild areas to observe how different species grow. He mentions that he used native plants rarely seen in gardens, creating what he calls “a meadow in the city.” He also notes that he chose durable plants that don’t require fertilization and attract butterflies and bees.

By creating the Lurie Garden, Oudolf says he “stepped over a threshold and came into another idea of design.”

Bottle gentian blooms in September at Lurie Garden.

Photo credit Lurie Garden/Millennium Park Foundation

Lurie Garden features two parts: the light plate to the west and the dark plate to the east. The dark plate includes trees and shrubs like hawthorns, chinquapin oak, Hill’s oak and smoke bush, which change to vibrant fall colors. “The dark plate is meant to feel as if you were immersed in the plantings,” Deery says. “It’s a nod to Chicago’s historical landscape. We’re in a setting where it used to be wet, marshy habitat.”

In the light plate, there’s a feature known as the Salvia River. “We have five different varieties of salvias, which give a big wonderful display in late May,” Deery relates. “We also have a lot of threadleaf bluestar. The fall color on that is gorgeous. It’s yellow-chartreuse.”

Visitors in September can enjoy goldenrod and aster species, as well as native bottle gentian. “The gentian is dotted throughout the light plate,” Deery says. “Some plants are grouped together. Other plants are more scattered. The gentian is a scatter plant. We love when we can see a bumblebee pulling it apart to get inside to the nectar.” 

Late summer and fall are the times when the grasses really start to shine, including switch grass and little bluestem.

“I would encourage people to look at native grasses to add to their gardens,” Deery suggests. “Little bluestem is great for late-season interest; so is prairie dropseed. It has this wonderful, soft texture. It’s restful to the eye, and in a very diverse garden, there’s a lot to take in, so it’s nice to have a group of prairie dropseed to give your eyes a rest,” she says, adding, “It smells so good; it smells like warm spices when it goes to seed.”

Another September favorite is American burnet, which has bluish foliage and white flowers.

Deery also oversees garden beds along Monroe and Columbus, known as the bird border. “Those plants are all natives and mostly shrubs,” she says. “They are well-suited for providing food for birds.” Some include serviceberry, elderberry, spicebush and American hazelnut.

“Gardeners view the plantings as an ecosystem and manage its growth based on observations instead of solely using traditional maintenance practices,” Deery notes.

For instance, horticulturists monitor insect populations and only manage pests if they reach a certain density.

When fall comes instead of cutting the plantings down, they leave them alone to provide visual interest as well as habitat and food for wildlife. Stems, for example, offer winter homes for bees and seeds provide food for goldfinches.

Visitors can experience peak colors in September and October. “The red and black chokeberry shrubs in the bird border get a fantastic, vibrant red color in the fall,” Deery says. “I also hope visitors get to see the willow leaf bluestar (and other bluestar plantings). The foliage gets a yellow color that makes it look as if the garden were glowing.” 

To learn which plants grow at Lurie Garden and what time of year they bloom, visit LurieGarden.org/plant-life.

Sheryl DeVore has written six books on science, health and nature, as well as nature, health and environment stories for national and regional publications. Read more at SherylDeVore.WordPress.com.