Chicago Botanic Garden Summer 2019

80 chicagobotanic.org Botanic gardens like ours juxtapose nature and culture, celebrating how humankind has used and manipulated plants in di erent ways and in di erent climates, to satisfy what are essential human needs and desires. e earliest botanic gardens assembled plants that were medicinal and poison- ous. ey were often the same plant; the outcome was based primarily on dosage. e oldest ex- tant example of such a garden dates to 1545: the Orto botanico di Padova, in Padua, Italy. Its combination of an enclosed, geometric form, with an outward-looking academic purpose con- nects medieval monastic design with Renaissance enlightenment. Geo rey Rausch’s design for our Heritage Garden is the Padua garden modernized for 1984, the year it opened. e outer beds in both gardens re ect familial plant relationships and interna- tional distribution. e original garden needed tall, stout walls (to deter plant thieves); our unique pollarded bald cypress echo this enclosure. e original’s square-in-a-circle layout is re- peated, as are the two central paths that divide the garden into quarters. But one quarter of our version is devoted to a statue of Carolus Linnaeus, whose insightful naming system helped moved scienti c communication about living things from chaos to certainty. is summer, in keeping with the Chicago Botanic Garden’s broader theme of Bees & Beyond, our central planter will pay homage to a signature pollinator magnet of our region, the purple cone ower. Next year, we’ll return to the primary purpose of the original: a physic garden; people in 1545 knew that “physic” meant “medicine.” Tom Soulsby, senior horticulturist, has been in charge of the Heritage Garden for nine years, and he well understands the connections and di erences between then and now. With a palette honed from 450 years of plant breeding to draw from, Tom paints glorious and diverse tapestries every season, as he remains faithful to the bigger picture of families and continents in the perimeter beds. is summer, in the mint bed, look for a quartet of thoroughly modern Salvia and their pollinators. In the North America bed, don’t miss Hamelia and Dicliptera . Tom is also in charge of the Krasberg Rose Garden, and works closely with Liz Rex, a 16-year veteran horticultur- ist for the Esplanade and the Crescent Garden. Her artistry can be seen in the bold sweeps of form, color, and texture in the Crescent beds, and in the dynamic seasonal container displays in front of the Regenstein Center, where moth- and bat-pollinated plants will be featured this summer. Both Tom and Liz also have a knack for answering visitor questions, and managing to keep some of our busiest and most heavily used gardens looking spotless. Key sta members like them help us ful ll our mission: We cultivate the power of plants to sustain and enrich life. Fred Spicer, executive vice president and director Honoring the world’s oldest botanic garden Heritage Garden | Opened: 1984 | Designer: Geoffrey Rausch and Environmental Planning and Design, which created much of the original Garden | Defining features: Statue of Carolus Linnaeus and seven perimeter beds that display plants according to their geographic origin. Aerial view of the Heritage Garden