MaryAnne Spinner, Chicago Master Gardener

Summer is on its way (really!), which means it's time to start planning for summer vacation. When I devise a vacation itinerary, it very often takes the form of a busman's holiday: the gardener in me wants to visit great gardens. Over the past decade I've been to some fascinating plots of land, some very elegant and grandiose, others rather funky, some world-famous, others rather obscure. But nearly all of them have been fun, educational, and inspiring. Here are some of my favorites.

New York
It is possible to spend a week in New York City and still not see all the gardens worth, as Michelin would say, a detour. Three of those gardens have delighted me enough to warrant multiple visits. First is the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (www.bbg.org), founded in 1910 with 52 acres of land built on the site of a former city dump. It features a wonderful Japanese garden, famous collections of magnolias and cherry trees, and the third largest rose garden in the United States, planted with some 5,000 roses and representing 1,500 species and cultivars. The BBG's Children's Garden was begun in 1914 and was the first of its kind in a botanic garden worldwide. Over 800 youngsters now garden annually there, in organized programs for children as young as three years old. The Fragrance Garden for the visually impaired was designed in 1955, as the first of its kind in this country. Visitors to this garden are encouraged to touch and smell the plants, and Braille labels identify the specimens, which grow in raised beds at just the right height for individuals in wheelchairs. The BBG's Bonsai Museum, with over 750 specimens, features the largest bonsai collection outside of Japan. And if you are lucky and arrive at BBG during the appropriate season, the intoxicating perfume of an allée of blooming linden trees fills the air.

The New York Botanical Garden (www.nybg.org) is located in the Bronx, and if you ride the subway out there from Manhattan, you'll pass Yankee Stadium on the way. Begun in 1896 with Carnegie, Vanderbilt, and Morgan monies, this garden comprises 250 acres, including 40 acres of uncut woodlands. The NYBG is a National Historic Landmark, particularly notable for its elegant Haupt Conservatory, a Victorian-style glasshouse that was modeled after one of the conservatories at Kew Gardens outside of London. The Haupt Conservatory shelters eleven distinct habitats and displays, including two types of rain forests, African and American deserts, and carnivorous and aquatic plants. It is also the site of changing exhibits, seasonal flower displays, and a holiday train show. The NYBG has numerous rich plant collections, among them stands of daylilies, lilacs and native plants, the Rockefeller Rose Garden, and the celebrated Seasonal Walk, which displays a succession of seasonal color throughout the year.

Less well-known than these two gardens, but well-worth the visit, is Wave Hill (www.wavehill.org). Also located in the Bronx, in the midst of a stylish residential neighborhood, Wave Hill was a 19^th Century private estate that opened to the public in 1965. It has notable collections of lilacs and viburnums, a Shade Border, and a Wild Garden of naturalistic plants inspired by the writings of influential English gardener William Robinson. As its name implies, the garden is built on a hillside, and offers spectacular views of the Hudson River and the 500-foot high Palisades on the opposite bank. Beyond its horticultural importance, the historical significance of this property is also quite impressive; before it became a public garden, former residents of Wave Hill included Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and Arturo Toscanini. It is said that Roosevelt's tenure here with his family (they rented the property when he was 12 and 13 years of age) contributed to his life-long passion for nature, and led to his presidential mission of preserving millions of acres of American parkland for posterity.


Boston
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston (www.gardnermuseum.org) is a multi-faceted attraction. The museum was originally the home of its namesake, a wealthy woman who traveled the world in the late 1880's and early 1900's, and who had diverse cultural interests. Mrs. Gardner was a patron of the arts who befriended many celebrities of the day, such as John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, and Henry James. She also supported community social services, the Boston Symphony, and was a devoted fan of both Harvard football and the Boston Red Sox. The museum houses an enormous collection of fine art–paintings, sculptures, silver, ceramics, rare books, and original furniture–including works by Botticelli, Titian, Vermeer, and Rembrandt. Mrs. Gardner assembled her collection with the assistance of one of the great art consultants of the era, Bernard Berenson. You may recall hearing about this museum in conjunction with one of the largest art thefts in history. In 1990, thieves dressed as Boston police officers stole thirteen of the museum's paintings (with an estimated value of $300 million), including a Vermeer, a Manet, and three Rembrandts. The thieves were never caught and the paintings were never recovered; large copies of the stolen works, draped in black, hang in their place. What remains is still magnificent, however, such as the stunning full-size Sargent portrait of Mrs. Gardner, dressed in black and wearing her legendary rope of pearls wrapped around her waist. But beyond the thousands of artworks on display, it is the dramatic focal point of the house itself which would be the envy of any cold-climate gardener longing for indoor growing space. The three-story mansion is built around a large heated and glassed-in central courtyard garden, ringed on each floor with open galleries affording a view to the greenery below. The courtyard is in bloom all year long, with bubbling fountains and ancient statuary, highlighted by a Roman mosaic floor depicting Medusa. It brims with trees, manicured lawns, and seasonal plantings, all maintained by a staff of volunteer gardeners. The courtyard is beautiful at any season, but if a winter vacation finds you in Boston, it is an especially lovely, peaceful respite from the cold. And by the way, anyone named "Isabella" is guaranteed free admission for life to the museum!


Philadelphia Area
One of the most storied botanical gardens on the continent is Longwood Gardens in Kennett, Pennsylvania, 30 miles from Philadelphia (www.longwoodgardens.org). Originally a farm started by a Quaker family in 1700, the land was purchased by Pierre duPont in 1906 in order to preserve a stand of beloved trees. After years of development by Pierre and successive donors, Longwood now has 1,060 acres of gardens and woodlands, encompassing 20 indoor gardens, 20 outdoor gardens, 4 acres of heated greenhouse space, and some 11,000 plants. Given the scope of this great garden, there is something of note for virtually every horticultural interest, from topiaries to peonies, bonsai to orchids. I was smitten by the huge pools full of water lilies, lotuses, and especially the giant waterplatters (Victoria cruziana x V. amazonica), which I had never seen anywhere else. DuPont was an engineer by trade, and had a life-long fascination with hydraulics. He traveled extensively throughout Europe, and when he returned he built monumental fountains based on those he had seen in such famous gardens as Versailles, the Villa d'Este in Italy, and even Chicago's own World Columbian Exposition of 1893. Longwood's fountains are indeed spectacular: the Main Fountain Garden has 380 water jets and 674 floodlights, and is capable of shooting jets of water 130 feet into the air above the gardens. Shows at the Main Fountain Garden are held three times daily, and during the summer Festival of Fountains (from May 26 through September 1 this year), spectacular half-hour illuminated evening shows set to classical music are held on Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday at 9:15 in the evening.

Not to be outdone by his cousin Pierre, in 1875 Henry Francis (Harry) duPont purchased his sister's property in Wilmington, Delaware, and began creating the estate known as Winterthur (www.winterthur.org). Located 30 miles from Philadelphia–and ten miles from Longwood–this estate ranges over 1,000 acres. Unlike Longwood's vast cultivated formal grounds, however, Winterthur's public gardens are spread over only 60 well-edited acres. The rest of the land is devoted to the house, and the rolling hills, meadows, and ponds leading to the Brandywine River. And like the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Winterthur is much more than a garden, as Harry was not only an ardent horticulturalist, but also an avid collector of antiques. To house his collection, he built Winterthur into a 196-room mansion, and it now holds the largest collection of American decorative arts in the world, itself worth a day's tour. Most of Winterthur's gardens are naturalistic, and in fact only two (the Peony Garden and the Sundial Garden) are designed in a truly formal style. The informal areas include the Azalea Woods, the Enchanted Woods (a three-acre fairy tale-themed children's garden) and the Quarry Garden. The latter is a boggy garden built into the bottom of an old quarry, planted with an outstanding collection of Primula and circled by oaks and beeches. But perhaps the most fascinating garden of all is the Pinetum, begun in 1914 with the planting of more than 50 species and varieties of rare and native conifers. The Pinetum is considered one of the finest collections of conifers in the eastern U.S., and features a spectacular dawn redwood, the first I had ever seen. To protect its treasures, the Pinetum cannot be visited on foot, but is accessed by narrated tour via Winterthur's own garden tram.

Montréal
The Montréal Botanic Garden (http://www2.ville.montreal.qc.ca/jardin/en/menu.htm) was created in 1931 by Brother Marie-Victorin, an ardent horticulturalist and Québécois nationalist, and renowned botanist Henry Teuscher. It is set out over 180 acres, comprised of 30 outdoor gardens and 10 exhibition greenhouses. Over half of the garden is devoted to its Arboretum, which features some 7,000 specimens of trees and shrubs in 45 collections. Among the MBG's more famous garden areas are the Poisonous Plant Garden, the Monastery Garden, and the Medicinal Plant Garden, as well as a large garden featuring plants of the Ericaceae family (broad-leaved evergreens such as rhododendrons, azaleas, and laurels), and Teuscher's own orchid collection. The bonsai collection is especially impressive with nearly 500 specimens, some up to 350 years old. Children will probably love the Insectarium, which contains 160,000 live and mounted insects, and a glass bee hive allowing a full view of bee activity during the summer months. The MBG has a wonderful Japanese garden featuring a tea garden designed from plans provided by the city of Hiroshima, and a Zen garden. Its beautiful Chinese Garden–my particular favorite–is the largest in the Western Hemisphere at five acres, and was designed and built in partnership with the city of Shanghai. As is the case with traditional Chinese gardens, the esthetic of the MBG's Chinese Garden is not solely a function of plants, but is also dependent on three other elements: water, stone, and architecture. The thousands of pieces of material needed to build the garden were shipped from Shanghai to Montréal in 120 containers in 1990, and were assembled by 50 Chinese craftsmen. The heart of this setting is the authentic Dream Lake Garden, inspired by the private gardens popular in the southern Yangtze River region during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644). The lake itself is flanked by a 30-foot high artificial mountain made of 30 tons of stone; artificial mountains were deemed to be an indispensable feature in this type of garden, as mountains were thought by ancient Taoists to hold up the sky.

Charlottesville, Virginia

Anyone who has ever spent a nickel will recognize the outline of Monticello (www.monticello.org), home to one of our greatest presidents and gardeners, Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson began building his home on part of his father's estate in 1768, at the age of 26. Eventually his property grew to 5,000 acres, and was a self-sustaining working plantation farmed by Jefferson's many slaves. He was an avid gardener and experimenter, who brought many plants such as grapes–36 varieties–to this country from Europe, and who regularly received gifts from famous travelers such as Lewis and Clark (corn and beans) and Captain William Bligh (rice from the South Seas). Jefferson documented his gardening adventures by writing his own garden book, which he began at age 23 and added to for 57 years until his death in 1826. It would be an understatement to say that Jefferson gardened on a very large scale. He received annual shipments of up to 700 different flower seeds from the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, planted a massive fruit garden with a 400-tree orchard he charmingly called a "Fruitery", and built a 1,000 foot-long terraced vegetable garden to grow 250 varieties of more than 70 different vegetable species. Although much of Jefferson's landscaping and gardens fell into ruin after his death, the property was restored in 1939 by the Garden Club of Virginia. Today, visitors can tour 40 cultivated acres of garden, along with the house, which still contains many of its original furnishings and works of art. The vegetable garden is especially striking, surrounded by trellises dripping with one of Jefferson's favorite plants, the beautiful hyacinth bean vine (lablab purpureus). And of the many trees Jefferson planted, at least five are still alive: two tulip poplars, a European larch, a red cedar, and a sugar maple. Said Jefferson, "Cultivators of the earth are the most virtuous and independant citizens." Amen to that.


There's no place like home
Finally, for those of you who would prefer to spend your summer in our beautiful city of Chicago, I urge you to visit the Garfield Park Conservatory to see the new exhibit, Niki in the Garden (http://www.nikiinthegarden.com/). On display throughout the conservatory–inside and out–are thirty enormous sculptures by the celebrated French artist, Niki de Saint Phalle. These sculptures, of fantastical birds and snakes, musicians and athletes (including our own Number 23), are covered with brightly hued mosaics, semi-precious stones, shards of mirrors and glass, and can be admired, sat upon, climbed, or crawled through. This is a great show for both children and adults, and I might even go out on a (mosaic) limb and say that in some ways it is even more spectacular than the Chihuly exhibit...

Check back soonfor Part Two of this article, Great Gardens to Visit-- West of the Rockies!

Do you have a gardening question? Email the Extension's Electronic Plant Clinic at rwolford@uiuc.edu, and our Master Gardeners will be glad to assist you.