2009 Feature Gardens
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Garden #1 - "Our World in Bloom Entrance Garden"
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As you enter the 2009 BELGARD Chicago Flower & Garden Show the show's theme comes to life with a great interpretation of gardening in an urban lifestyle this garden set by Moore Landscapes, shows how cultural influences and city living merge together simplistic design, natural green dividing walls, raised planting beds, a water feature and structural art!!! What MOORE could you want!!! SO enter and enjoy OUR WORLD IN BLOOM ....
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Garden #2 - "Water SHEDD"
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Designed by Shedd Aquarium horticultural manager Christine Nye, in collaboration with Roy Diblik, co-owner of Northwest Perennial Farm, WaterShedd illustrates effective and pleasing ways to compose a xeriscape garden (an environment that requires no or minimal irrigation) using native and non-native plant species. Gathered around the façade of a house, this garden features an array of shrubs, trees, grasses and perennials, including Red Chokeberry (Aronia arbutifolia 'Brilliantissima'), American hazelnut (Corylus americana), Meadow Sage (Salvia nemorosa 'Bluehill'), and Blue Sedge (Carex flacca). As Diblik notes, cutting back on water usage and providing habitat for wildlife does not mean forfeiting the aesthetic pleasures of traditional gardening. "This is about combining textures and shapes with moments of color to compose a kind of stylish theme. It's about what I call, 'know maintenance gardening' -- choosing plants that relate to your lifestyle and the amount of time you want to devote to gardening. If you understand plants and what it takes to take care of them, you can create and maintain a garden and have fun doing it."
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Garden #3 - "Greening Up"
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The professionals of Chicago's Garfield and Lincoln Park conservatories fashion a four-season garden set around a replica of a typical Chicago garage, with an emphasis on illustrating how homeowners can use vines and various planting schemes to create green facades in their yards. The spring quadrant of the garden displays those sure signs of the approaching change of season -- daffodils, tulips, hyacinths -- and includes wisteria and a cold frame demonstrating how to start early lettuce cultivation. Summer sports an array of herbs -- rosemary, thyme, basil and chive -- along with honeysuckle vines and a Quaking Aspen tree. Fall features bittersweet, ferns, kale, Swiss chard and ornamental grasses such as Carex and Miscanthus. Winter is represented by a formal garden with boxwood, juniper, hemlock; dormant clematis illustrates the Greening Up theme. Sod, pavers, mulch and stepping stones complete the design scheme. Plants in this year-round garden are primarily from the Garfield and Lincoln Park conservatories, with additional material from commercial vendors -- all of which will be re-used in city parks at the conclusion of the show.
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Garden #4 - "Science In Bloom at the Museum of Science and Industry"
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The Museum of Science and Industry blooms into spring with this spectacular display reminiscent of a child's pop-up book. The Museum's Beaux-Arts building, dating back to 1893, rises 22 feet within a whimsical garden that represents four of its iconic exhibits -- the U-505 Submarine; the Pioneer Zephyr; the Chick Hatchery; and Smart Home: Green + Wired -- using a dazzling array of flowers and foliage. Playful graphic interpretations of these exhibits are married with fragrant and colorful spring blossoms, including hyacinth, daffodils and stock, creating a fun and whimsical garden. This project is a collaboration between the Museum, Jacobs/Ryan Associates and Christy Webber Landscapes. Visit www.msichicago.org for more information on these exhibits -- and much more!
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Cultural Institution
Museum of Science and Industry
57th Street and Lake Shore Drive | Chicago
www.msichicago.org
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This garden was inspired by an upcoming exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art: Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe (opens March 15). One of the greatest American visionaries of the 20th century -- best known as the inventor of the Geodesic Dome -- Fuller's work continues to influence today's artists, designers, architects, engineers, environmentalists and mathematicians. He was concerned with meeting the needs of a growing global civilization while reducing the use of natural resources; his inventions were meant to achieve those goals by simplifying and improving human housing and the objects of daily life. Inspired by Fuller's sustainable responses to architecture and landscape, this playful, sculptural interpretation of his Dymaxion Projection Map (a world map projected onto the surface of a polyhedron shape, which can then be unfolded in many different ways and flattened to form a two-dimensional map which retains most of the relative proportional integrity of the globe map), celebrates the link between the practice of landscape architecture and Fuller's fascination with "how nature builds." Constructed of plant-covered facets in the form of squares and equilateral triangles set within a circular space, GeoGarden suggests a globe rising from a two-dimensional image.
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Cultural Institution
Museum of Contemporary Art
220 E Chicago Ave | Chicago
www.mcachicago.org
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Garden #6 - "Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo"
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This garden serves as a sneak peek at one of the major environmental efforts now underway at the Lincoln Park Zoo -- the transformation of the pond adjacent to Café Brauer into the Nature Boardwalk. When completed in 2010, this revitalized landscape will provide a haven for native birds, frogs, fish, insects and mammals while serving as an outdoor classroom for students of all ages. New natural shorelines, native vegetation and a re-engineered pond will provide eight acres of prime habitat for native wildlife and an outdoor classroom for environmental education. The innovative Peoples Gas Education Pavilion will anchor a wide range of learning programs. Mobile labs will promote hands-on lessons on pond ecology, while trained pond naturalists interpret wetlands wildlife. Strolling through the garden at Navy Pier, visitors will experience some of the visual elements that will make the south pond in Lincoln Park one of the city's great natural treasures.
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Cultural Institution
Lincoln Park Zoo
2001 N Clark St | Chicago
www.lpzoo.com
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Garden #7 - "Del Agua Viene La Vida"
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The garden is based on the geometry of a Mesoamerican symbol, the Galactic Butterfly. To the Mayans it represented all consciousness and life's inherent properties; moreover, it represented balance, duality, and interconnectivity. From this foundation emerge four individual gardens that, while unique, are inextricably connected to form an encompassing environment. Illustrating the juxtaposition of themes such as water and sun, past and future, life and death, we have created a garden honest, in form, to the Mexican cultures, artists, architects, and designers who inspired it.
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Garden #8 - "Paradise in a Parking Lot"
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Addressing water and energy conservation, alternative energy sources, and recycling, Paradise in a Parking Lot puts a twist on the classic Joni Mitchell song, "Big Yellow Taxi" ("They paved paradise, put up a parking lot."). This installation suggests the garden that visitors see sprang up from a parking lot, a notion underscored by the presence of broken asphalt, parking meters and remnants of a parking ramp. The garden -- designed by Community Garden volunteers Denise Browning, Jim Angrabright, Leslie Zimmerman, Richard Tilley, Amy Brinkman, Susan Fontana and Doug Wood -- is a vivid reminder that Chicago's Community Parks enhance neighborhood life by providing an attractive amenity that can help reduce crime and provide space for public events. The garden, which features a range of plant material, is contoured with berms made from bags of peat moss. Key to the garden is a group of kites crafted from recycled paper and plant material, made by children in the Park Kids Grow Programs. These, along with all the material used to create the garden, will be recycled at community gardens throughout the city at the conclusion of the Chicago Flower & Garden Show.
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Garden #9 - "America's Backyard"
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A celebration of where we live, this garden features high-end, three-season gazebos clad in cedar, a hot tub and an eye-appealing patio created with pavers -- all set against a backdrop of evergreens. Other natural touches include an array of annuals and perennials, such as coleus, gerbera daisy, ornamental peppers, snap dragons and verbena.
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Garden #10 - "Illinois Master Gardeners"
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Learn how the pro's do it with the experts who will be on hand from the Illinois Master Gardeners. Learn about their programs, services and much more. Consider them the "all-Illinois" resource at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show!
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Garden #11 - "Sustainable Gardens for a Changing World"
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Thoughtfully devised to illustrate how homeowners can recycle rainwater and put it to use, this garden features an array of water features, all of which operate from the captured "rain water" streaming off a 30 foot façade representing a typical suburban home. Centered on an underground rain exchange system situated beneath a permeable patio, the garden is a dynamic arrangement that includes a koi pond, pondless waterfall, fountain rocks and a bubbling urn.
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Garden #12 - "Cultural Blooms ... Inspirations of Our World"
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This Exhibit of cultural inspirations is inspired by the 8 photos of people and places from around our world. Each different and yet the same draws a different artistic interpretation for the designer whom has created a floral rendering of the photo. Showing a different view, perspective, or artistic license which makes each of us see the value of one ... Or the value of the group as a whole in a creative retrospect of our Living, Breathing, and Blooming world of cultural differences!
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Garden Collaborator
American Institute of Floral Designers
North Central Chapter
www.aifd.org
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Garden #13 - "Futures in Bloom"
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Designed and constructed by students at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences (CHSAS), "Futures in Bloom" emphasizes preparation for future careers through studies in both academics and agriculture. The exhibit illustrates five agriculture pathway classes: agricultural mechanics and technology, agricultural finance, food science, horticulture and animal science. The academic theme is symbolized by a vertical hardscape and the space is enlivened with by such details as topiaries, an antique tractor and a golf green. Plant material includes conifers, fresh flowers and a vegetable patch. All materials used in this exhibit are recycled from CHSAS farm operations or will be recycled at the end of the exhibit.
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Cultural Institution
Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences
3857 West 111th Street | Chicago
www.chicagoagr.org
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Garden Collaborator
Chicago Public Schools
Chicago, IL
www.cps.edu
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Garden #14 - "A World of Adventure - Kids' Activity Garden"
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Gardening is truly a family-oriented activity and a special garden at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show has been designed for younger family members to burn off some energy while learning something about grawing plants. Several groups have volunteered to create activites for those under 14 throughout the 9-day show. Whichever day you visit, there will be a chance to partake in the Kids' Activity Garden fun!
Click here for a schedule of events
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Garden #15 - "Above and Below"
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Artist Richard A. Walsh, sculptor and installer of the Sugar from the Sun permanent exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory brings this stunning scultpure garden both on the ground and in the air. Three large rotating pieces ranging from nine feet to twenty one feet are suspended from the sixty foot ceiling of Navy Pier over the terrestrial sculpture garden below. The garden is laden with functional and abstract organic art to wander amongst.
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Long time exhibitor RikRock, Inc. creates another simple yet captivating water feature combining his talents with stone, steel and water. A pondless water feature highlights this garden with ten tons of stone to create a serene cascading waterfall. Also included is a unique stainless steel waterfall flower petal rising six feet from the pond and cascading down. RikRock, Inc. had the honor of installing the Sugar from the Sun permanent exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory this past year. In this first of its kind exhibit RikRock installed over two hundred tons of stone creating water features and pathways.
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Garden #16 - "Garden Gourmet"
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More than two dozen top-ranked chefs plant the seeds of culinary inspiration with dynamic cooking demonstrations using fresh vegetables and herbs from the garden. Presented by Royal Prestige, the name synonymous with dependable products of excellent quality and value, including cookware, china, crystal, flatware and cutlery.
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Garden #17 - "BELGARD Hardscapes Photo Competition Garden"
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Returning for its third year, this visitor-friendly garden showcases 30 floral and landscaping photographs taken by amateur photographers from around the Midwest. The juried images are as diverse as the individuals themselves. In addition, visitors are encouraged -- for $1 per vote that's donated to the day's designated local charity -- for their fave. The highest vote getter's image will then be incorporated in marketing materials for the 2010 Chicago Flower & Garden Show.
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