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.

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.