Idea Garden, Champaign

Posted on August 1, 2019 by admin

Besides Decatur, we spent some time over the weekend in Champaign, including a short visit to the Idea Garden of the University of Illinois Arboretum.

Back in the spring, the Idea Garden was mostly just that, notional, but since then volunteers have brought the place to full flower. Literally.
A small structure mid-garden was being used for an informal gardening class when we passed by. Something about garden pests. Sunflowers reaching to the sky. Taller than a grown human being. One of the volunteers told me it was a special kind that grows tall. Not a lot of gardeners like them, he said, but he did.

Elephant ears!
I have fond memories of large elephant ears when I was a child.
The picture is ca. 1970, of my brother Jim and I and the front-yard elephant ears. I might have been small, but that’s not why I remember our elephant ears as large — they were objectively large. That’s the way they grew for a few early years at our house in San Antonio. In later years, they came up smaller and eventually disappeared.

Scovill Sculpture Park

Posted on July 31, 2019 by admin

First, we drove across Lake Decatur on US 36. Later, we walked near the shore of the lake, though at that point a fence was between us and the lake.
We didn’t mind, because we were taking a late afternoon stroll on Saturday at Scovill Sculpture Park. As these things go, the lake is old — almost 100 years, a project of civic improvement that also happened to be very useful for corn wet-milling. A.E. Staley, of corn products fame (see yesterday), had a major hand in the creation of the lake by damming the Sangamon River upstream in the early ’20s.

On the other hand, the sculpture park, on Decatur Park District land between the Scoville Zoo and the Decatur Children’s Museum, isn’t that old — only about three years. Interestingly, the sculptures aren’t permanent fixtures, but leased from the artists. After a few years, a new crop is brought in. According to my sources, the second set of 10 is in place now.

“My Favorite Things,” by Travis Emmen.
“Calibration,” by Luke Achterberg.
“Absence,” by Joseph Ovalle.
“Urban Forest,” by Richard Herzog.
“Rybee House 2,” by Stephen Klema.

The park also includes the Scovill Oriental Garden, which has elements of Chinese and Japanese gardens.

Of course the park has a gazebo.
As well it should. Here’s a book or database for someone to create someday: The Great Gazebo Gazetteer.

Mabery Gelvin Botanical Gardens

Posted on June 20, 2019 by admin

RIP, Bernie Judge. He was an old-school Chicago newspaperman and my boss 30 years ago. Not a mentor, exactly, but I did learn a few things from him — most of which I didn’t appreciate until later.

By last Sunday morning, the rain had stopped and we visited the Mabery Gelvin Botanical Gardens in Mahomet, Illinois, not far outside Champaign.
At eight acres, the garden isn’t large, but it is a pretty place in June.
Featuring the blooming Dogwood (Cornus kousa).
A Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana). The South doesn’t get all the magnolias. According to the sign next to the tree, “… the genus magnolia is 95 million years old. Older than bees, they are pollinated by beetles.”
Japanese lilac (Syringa reticulata).
The garden is part of the larger Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve. We took a walk along some of its trails, eventually coming to a covered bridge: Lake of the Woods Covered Bridge. Wooden construction, but also with hidden steel support to make it vehicle-worthy.
It isn’t one of the 19th-century bridges you find in the Midwest. Rather, vintage 1965. As the park district says: “After the purchase of an 80-acre tract of land west of the Sangamon River in the 1960s, the Lake of the Woods Covered Bridge was constructed to connect the two sides of Lake of the Woods Forest Preserve in Mahomet. Designed by German Gurfinkel, a Civil Engineering instructor at the University of Illinois, the bridge was a replica of the Pepperel Bridge [sic] near Boston.”

The view from the bridge of the Sangamon River, which flows on to Springfield and then to the Illinois River.
We walked across the bridge. You should cross bridges when you come to them, if possible. Before we left the forest preserve, we also drove across it, because we don’t get to drive across covered bridges that much.

Indianapolis Artsgarden, 2014

Posted on April 28, 2019 by admin

Easter fell fairly late five years ago, April 20, and we traveled that weekend as well. That time to Indianapolis, where we saw the Eiteljorg Museum and ate at Maxine’s Chicken & Waffles. A good little trip.

We also spent part of that Saturday afoot in downtown Indianapolis, including a short stop at an interesting public space: the Indianapolis Artsgarden, a large domed structure built over a major intersection.

Besides connecting the adjacent Circle Centre Mall to a nearby hotel and other buildings, the Arts Council of Indianapolis — which owns the space — holds public performances there, along with art exhibitions.

Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects (now part of Perkins Eastman), who designed Circle Centre, did the Artsgarden too in the 1990s. Actually not so much a single dome as a series of glass vaults. Makes for a light, open space.

Even when occupied by fully grown trees.

No event was going on when we were there, but it was a pleasant place to hang out. I did that while everyone else went shopping at the adjacent retail. If I remember right, they found some spring clothes.

University of Illinois Arboretum & Japan House

Posted on April 24, 2019 by admin

On Easter Sunday, I drove Lilly back to UIUC, and this time the rest of the family came along for the ride: Yuriko, Ann and the dog. Been awhile since we’ve been on a trip of more than a few miles with the dog, but we figured she’d enjoy it and not be too much trouble. Except for the soda spill she caused toward the end of the trip, she wasn’t.

So we had a few pleasant hours in Champaign-Urbana, with temps in the 70s and greenery budding everywhere. Especially at the University of Illinois Arboretum.

“The University of Illinois Arboretum was developed in the late 1980s to early 1990s,” according to the university. “The original 1867 campus master plan placed the Arboretum north of Green Street where the College of Engineering currently exists. During the 1900s, the site moved to south campus, located near the Observatory, and Smith Music Hall.

“Now located at the intersection of South Lincoln and Florida Avenues, the Arboretum’s gardens, collections, and habitats are transforming 160 acres of the University’s south campus in Urbana-Champaign into an exceptional ‘living laboratory’ for students in plant sciences and fine and applied arts, as well as an oasis of natural beauty open to the public.”

I don’t know about natural beauty, since an arboretum, though working with living materials, is man-made. But if you called it artificial beauty, people think plastic or some other synthetic material. So let’s just say it’s a beautiful spot.

A trail leads from the small parking lot and toward the arboretum’s large pond.

Also on the grounds of the University of Illinois Arboretum is Japan House.
Japan House is a unit of the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the UIUC, beginning when a Japanese artist-in-residence, Shozo Sato, came to the school in 1964, with the building completed in 1998. Such rarefied arts are calligraphy, tea, ikebana and sumi-e are taught there.

Japan House itself wasn’t open on Sunday, but the grounds were.
Including a view of the zen garden.
The grounds would be a good place for moon viewing, or tsukimi. Wonder if that’s ever happened there.

The Warrenville Garden, 1987

Posted on August 19, 2018 by admin

About once a month during the warm months of 1987, and maybe a few times the year after that, I drove from Chicago to southwest suburban Warrenville — it seemed pretty far away — to visit a friend of mine who had just bought a house in that suburb. He lives in Texas these days, and I’ve since lost touch with him, except for a nominal link on Facebook.

He cultivated a large garden in his large back yard and I helped him out because it was a novelty and because he gave me some of the produce. There was a lot of produce.
“We aren’t gardening for food,” he once said. “We’re gardening for virtue.”

He was a conscientious gardener, and I took home so many vegetables and melons that I further took some to my office and gave them to anyone who wanted them. They were a hit. A woman in the office who’d grown up on a downstate farm complimented the squash in particular.

I’d forgotten that my friend had made pictures of the garden. Also that I had a few of them tucked away.

Corn, tomatoes, melons, carrots, peas, green beans, cucumbers, squash and much else I’ve probably forgotten.

Not a bad thing to do for part of a summer. But I also found I had no natural passion for gardening. Later attempts in my own back yards were indifferent and lackluster. One problem in particular, aside from hating to weed: when the plants I wanted to grow were just sprouting, I couldn’t always tell them apart from weeds.

The pictures of the plants on the seed packages were no use in making that determination, either. They always showed idealized, fully grown examples.

Leif Erikson and His Rose Garden

Posted on August 15, 2018 by admin

According to Wiki, which cites a book called Vikings in the Attic: In Search of Nordic America by Eric Dregni (2011), there are statues of Leif Erikson in Boston, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Paul, Duluth and Seattle.

According to Leif Erikson.org, there are also statues of him in Reykjavik, as well as Newport News, Va.; Trondheim, Norway; Minot, ND, Eiríksstaðir, Iceland; Brattahlid (Qassiarsuk), Greenland; Cleveland (a bust); and L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

That’s not counting the more generic Viking Big Ole, who stands in Alexandria, Minn., home of the pretty-sure-it’s-a-hoax Kensington Runestone.

I’ve seen the Chicago Leif Erikson myself; it’s in Humboldt Park. Now I’ve seen the one in Duluth. Here it is.

Carved on the plinth are the Viking’s name and “Discoverer of America 1000 A.D.” Also that the statue, designed and executed by John Karl Daniels, was erected by the Norwegian American League (no hyphen) of Duluth and “popular subscription.” It was “presented to the city” on August 25, 1956.

I wonder what Leif, an obscure chieftain from a remote island 1,000 years ago, would make of his current modest fame, which came to his name more than 800 years after his death. Modest fame, but then again, how many other 10th/11th-century figures are so well known in the 20th/21st century?

Who among the teeming billions on the Earth now, through some completely convoluted and unpredictable set of circumstances across the centuries to come, will be remembered at the beginning of the fourth millennium, for reasons impossible to imagine?

A stout iron fence surrounds the statue, I guess to discourage casual vandalism, but ardent vandals, statue revisionists, or garden-variety wankers could climb the fence without too much trouble. As far as I know, there hasn’t been much grumbling about old Leif, though skinhead lowlifes apparently try to co-opt a statue of the lesser-known Icelandic explorer Thorfinn Karlsefni in Pennsylvania each October 9.

That being Leif Erikson Day. Time And Date.com says: “October 9 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the day that the ship Restauration arrived in New York from Stavanger, Norway, on October 9, 1825. This was the start of organized immigration from Scandinavia to the USA. The date is not associated with an event in Leif Erikson’s life.”

Some context for the Leif Erikson statue in Duluth: it’s in Leif Erickson Park (sometimes styled Erikson) and next to the Leif Erikson Rose Garden, also known as the Duluth Rose Garden. It has some fine plantings.
The garden “was begun by Mrs. John Klints, a native of Latvia, who wanted to give her adopted home of Duluth a beautiful formal rose garden similar to those she’d known in Europe,” says Public Gardens of Minnesota. “It opened in 1965 within Leif Erickson Park, with 2,000 roses, all arranged in gently curving beds surrounding an antique horse fountain. Here it remained for 25 years….

“A vast and ambitious city redevelopment project, and a clever Department of Transportation solution to the termination point of the freeway entering Duluth, resulted in the new location of the rose garden. The garden reopened in 1994 after four years of construction… again as part of the new Leif Erickson Park.

“The six acres are still formal in nature and still have the fountain and gazebo from the original garden, but the beds are now two long beds and four circular beds. There are now in excess of 3,000 roses and 12,000 non-rose plantings, including day lilies, evergreen shrubs, mixed perennials and an herb garden.”

Good to see the garden’s gazebo. It has a nice view of Lake Superior. That’s what this country needs, more public gazebos.

Last Thursday in June Olla Podrida

Posted on June 28, 2018 by admin

A few days ago, when it was cloudy and cool, I happened to be at the Schaumburg Town Center. The place has an underappreciated garden. Underappreciated by me, anyway.Since then, genuine summer has returned in the form of warmer temps. High 90s are forecast for the weekend. It’s been a rainy summer so far, though.

One detail I forgot to mention about the Lincoln Museum. Ann said she was most amused by learning that in his youth, the president was a talented ax-thrower. I was amused too. They took entertainment where they could get it in the 19th century.

One more picture from the Lincoln Museum. Don’t recognize them? On Jeopardy, the clue would be “Maj. Henry Rathbone and Clara Harris.”

The question: Which couple was in the presidential box with the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre?

Their story is as sad as that of the Lincolns, or even worse. Rathbone later married Harris, but his mental health deteriorated in the following years, and he eventually murdered her. He died in 1911 in an insane asylum.

Saw this not long ago in Chicago, on Irving Park Blvd.
A bust of Jose P. Rizal, ophthalmologist and martyred Philippine nationalist. How many ophthalmologists get to be national heroes as well? I can’t think of any others.

Allerton Park Gardens

Posted on June 6, 2018 by admin

The Robert Allerton Park & Retreat Center (and why “center”?) is an expansive place, much of it wooded. Because of high humidity last Saturday, we didn’t walk along many of the wooded paths, though I made a mental note that fall, maybe October, would be a fine time to do so.

We did take a look at some of the formal gardens. Such as the Brick Walled Garden.

We walked between the long, tall bushes leading away from the visitors center to find other gardens.

The shrubery forming the row looked like it could be part of a complex maze, but it wasn’t, since it ran in straight lines. Also, it was fairly porous.
This was called the Chinese Maze Garden, and I suppose it would be a challenge for people a foot tall.

The Bulb Garden.
The blooms were off at the Peony Garden, unfortunately. But I liked the wall next to it.
The Annual Garden was fenced in to keep deer out.
A water sprinkler was also running. I spent a refreshing few seconds under it.

The Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden

Posted on June 5, 2017 by admin

Geophysicist and petroleum geologist Everette Lee DeGolyer (1886–1956) put oil exploration on a more scientific footing in the early 20th century. I’ve read about him and his work, but do not understand the details. Maybe I could if I read more about it, but life is short.

“In May 1925 DeGolyer organized a subsidiary of Amerada, the Geophysical Research Corporation, which located a record eleven Gulf Coast salt domes in nine crew months and perfected a reflection seismograph that has become the principal tool for geophysical oil exploration worldwide,” says the Handbook of Texas Online. “This technology inaugurated the modern age of oil exploration with the 1930 discovery of the Edwards oilfield in Oklahoma by reflection survey.”

Enough to say here that DeGolyer was an oilman among oilmen, and later in life, he and his wife Nell DeGolyer (1886–1972) lived on an estate on White Rock Lake, as the city of Dallas grew around them.

The Handbook entry on Nell takes it from there: “Another abiding interest for her in Dallas was the family’s forty-four-acre estate known as Rancho Encinal, which she and her husband built and decorated. The thirteen-room Spanish Colonial Revival structure on White Rock Lake in East Dallas, completed in 1940, reflected the DeGolyers’ world travels, Everette’s outstanding book collection, and Nell’s expertise in gardening.

“Until her death Mrs. DeGolyer lived in this home; it was willed to Southern Methodist University after her death and several years later became the property of the city of Dallas. Into the 1990s the city used it, as the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society, to showcase the gardens planned and maintained by Nell DeGolyer.”

The DeGolyer estate, plus the adjoining Alex and Roberta Coke Camp estate, form the modern Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden, open since 1984. We spent a pleasant May afternoon there. It’s hard to go wrong at a place with lily pads and koi.

And babbling brooks. Or maybe they murmur, since babbling implies a negative incoherence.

And other water features, some within view of White Rock Lake.

A lot of flowers, in various arrays.

Plenty of bushes and trees.
Open spaces for children to be children.

Spaces for formal pictures. Could be a quinceañera participant.
Formal spaces.
Wiki nails it with this line: “A horticultural masterpiece in North Texas.”

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: gardens