Lurie Garden in Millennium Park

The Millennium Park in Chicago is a part of the extensive Grants Park situated between Lake Michigan and South Michigan Avenue. In Grants Park you will among other attractions find the Art Museum, the spectacular and famous Buckingham Fountain and in the very south of the park the Shedd Aquarium with a very wide range of aquatic animals including sharks, turtles and jellyfishes.

On my daughter’s birthday, July 16th 2004, the Millennium Park in the Northern part of Grants Park, was opened to public. Here you can visit the Lurie Garden made by Kathryn Gustafson, Piet Oudolf and Robert Israel.

It is a 20,000 m² (5 acres) big garden divided into two different parts, the light plate and the dark plate, divided by a formal water channel and a broader pathway. Both sides are planted with perennials and are traversed by several walking paths. The perennial planting design is made by Piet Oudolf from the Netherlands. It is a kind of naturalistic planting although the plants are arranged in distinct blocks rather then spread naturally in a meadow like pattern.

Piet has used a mixture of plants from North America, Europe and Asia. The Salvia River known from Drömparken in Enköping in Sweden is here used in a bigger scale and its movement through the planting breaks the static planting blocks a bit in a very beneficial way.

When we visited the park in the end of July the Echinacea purpurea was blooming as best together with especially Hemerocallis and Allium senescens.

The Prairie Junction in Mariestad

The Prairie in Mariestad will be growing on all four sides of a four-way junction when it becomes ready on a number of years. The first part was planted two years ago and is now beginning to gradually get established. We also sowed some seeds of certain species to get more dense vegetation. The pictures are from last weekend.

Echinacea, Agastache and Parthenium  

Aster pilosus, the Frost Aster

Prairie inspired plantings

On several places in the nursery Jan has created small plots with very expressive perennial plantings. Here there are some excellent combinations especially with structural perennials together with soft, sweeping grasses.

All plantings are made in a very beautiful naturalistic style. Jan use to call them all for Prairie plantings and there we have a small disagreement. In my opinion a true Prairie planting has to consist of or at least be dominated by plants from North America and preferably from the Prairie itself of course and not be a mixture with European or Asian plants.

Here the the Red Feather Clover, Trifolium rubens, earlier made this spot glowing hot. 

If possible I also want it to mirror the ecosystem of the prairie, there all species has different roles. The typical prairie grasses are important to use because of their ability to penetrate and nearly totally occupy the upper layer of the soil. This makes it more difficult for unwanted plants to take root. They also grow extremely deep into the ground and can therefore tolerate long periods of severe drought.

The American Pale Coneflower, Echinacea pallida, does well

with the Giant Feather Grass, Stipa gigantea, from the Old World

There are so many true Prairie plants to choose between so it is really no need for the use of plants from other regions. But still Jan’s plantings of course are very enjoyable and nicely composed in all other aspects. Although Jan is a nursery man by profession he has a great talent in garden design as well. However I prefer to call his plantings for naturalistic or prairie inspired plantings. I hope he can forgive me for that...

Outside a big tank for storing water for irrigation a little bigger spot with a really nice prairie style vegetation can be found.

Jan Spruyt - Van der Jeugd

Geert picked us up at the airport of Brussels and drove us to Mostenveld in Buggenhout there we met Jan Spruyt inside his office. After a cup of tea Jan kindly showed us around at the huge nursery area.

BVBA Jan Spruyt - Van der Jeugd is the biggest perennial nursery in Belgium, around 6 ha of perfect maintained growing perennials, both well known market busters and seldom seen rare collecting plants.

As his son Nik nowadays runs the nursery, Jan himself can concentrate more on selection of new perennial cultivars and his other big passion – naturalistic prairie inspired plantings.

Jan Spruyt and some of his Echinacea seedlings

On the trial fields in Mostenveld there are many interesting seedlings from a big range of different perennials. Jan has a great interest in American prairie and meadow plants and he tries to select forms with better and sturdier growth habit. Many new forms of Echinacea purpurea are also growing in the beds and some of them can certainly be an improvement of the existing already vast assortment.

Some few years ago the company invested in a new planting machine

The extensive assortment of Heuchera

Lilium 'Landini', bruinzwart en erg mooi

I wonder if this is the darkest form among all Lily cultivars? The flowers of Lilium 'Landini' are anyhow tinted in a very dark blackish brown shade and the stems are very dark as well. It grows about 70-90 cm tall and flowers in early summer. Something to dream wet Lily dreams about. Have you ever seen a darker one?

The beds for shade loving plants are shaded by nets

Perennials ready packed to be delivered to a Garden Centre – and these will be very easily sold, don’t you agree?.

The Prairie Junction in Mariestad

Planted in late autumn last year this new prairie isn't really established yet. Except from some grasses (Andropogon, Schizachyrium and Sporobolus) most plants at least have survived the long and harsh winter. But will they stand the drought? When I visited the planting it appeared to be very dry in the root zone and most plants were suffering from the lack of water. Unfortunately it is not possibly to irrigate this planting so let's hope for some really rainy days soon. We also planted a lot of seeds among the perennials, but not many of these seeds seem to have taken root.

The whole area of 1500 square meters (0.4 acres) was before we started to plant covered by a layer of about 15-20 cm of macadam. This to create a good drainage and more important to prevent the planting from weed seeds in the existing soil under the macadam layer.

I guess we have to wait two or three seasons before this prairie planting has established properly. But I do think it then will be a real stunning show place so it is for sure worth all waiting.

The plants are suffering from the terrible scarcity of water  

Most planted perennials have survived, but where are all the expected seedlings?