Lurie Garden – enclos*ure

In September, we spent a weekend in Chicago. These steps are located in its downtown, along the south side of the Chicago River. Each rise is about 18.”

It was near here that I tripped on a single step off the sidewalk. My poor little camera took most of the force, but happily still works.

Remember — all landscape design students say it with me — “a single step is a tripping hazard.” (I’ve personally proved it many times.)

The Chicago River, with its Riverwalk, is the best landscape in the city. I think the skyscrapers are thrilling.

Below was the view from our hotel room. A little dizzying.

I thought I could see back to Madison, Wisconsin, our previous destination.

After a skyscraper walking tour by the Architecture Foundation, I spent an afternoon at the Art Institute of Chicago and Millennium Park on South Michigan Avenue.

I loved these cabbages in the huge planters in front of the Art Institute. I’m so happy to see ornamental cabbages and kale having a moment again — I started gardening in the ’80s.

Millennium Park, which is just north of the museum and includes Lurie Garden, is remarkable.

I loved the “Cloud Gate,”

the way it reflected the surrounding skyscrapers,

and the way people interacted with it — including me, in the background with the yellow bag (below).

Where we ate

During our short visit, we ate twice at the great Purple Pig (their patio below at sunset) at 500 N. Michigan Avenue. On the second night, our dessert was simply two slices of toasted artisanal bread spread in-between with Nutella, marshmellow cream, and sliced bananas. Then the “sandwich” was liberally topped with powdered sugar. It was wonderful.

If you have to be in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport — and we all will eventually — definitely eat at Rick Bayless’s Tortas Frontera. We discovered it on our last trip in March, and this time we actually made a point of taking flights that would put us in Terminal 1 (go to gate B11) about lunchtime.

The landscape in the distance can provide one of the colors in a planting bed combination.

That’s come home to me this week as I’ve noticed how great the yellow daylilies in front of our terrace look against our view of the blue Kigali hills and sky.

Classic blue and yellow are working really well in this open, bright area. (The columns of the terrace are pale yellow too.)

Below are yellow abutilon and yellow foliage in the same area. I need to bring some cream into the mix.

As the garden comes back from our all the changes we made this summer, I’m starting to think more comprehensively about structure/color combinations in the planting beds. In June, as my two temporary helpers were fast digging up swathes of shrubs and flowers, there wasn’t a lot of time to get too prissy about perennial placement — I knew where I wanted the shrubs and grass, my main concerns for Phase One.

Quickly, I tried to direct the placement of the other plants into something like the ever-advised drifts, but as things fill in, I’m not getting the overall “clarity” (the word that most comes to my mind) that I want. So I need to get the shovel back out. (But these daylilies are good.)

I’m thinking about this observation on the relationship between plant color and form by Piet Oudolf:

Different shapes + different colours
There is a danger that there will be too much contrast. The eye may be overstimulated, and there may be no common ground.

He goes on, however, to say that “this is only a suggestion to be cautious. . . as even outrageous contrasts may work!”

He indicates that easier approaches may be:

Related shapes + related colours
Different shapes + related colours [Think Nori and Sandra Pope — I am.]
Related shapes + different colours

(from Designing with Plants.)

In September, we visited Chicago, and I spent some time in the Oudolf-designed* Lurie Garden. In the large section in the photo below, fading shades of purple predominated.