Chicago Blues

This weekend I had the most glorious time in Chicago. Although the mother nature did her best to challenge us with her temper tantrums, she couldn't put a damper in our visit.

Over the four days I walked every inch and mile that I could, taking photos like crazy. The spring plantings were a gardeners dream come true.

Chicago is famous for it's Blues scene, well, I found quite a few different blues there. To begin with, that's me in front of the Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. As you can see the sky was as blue as could be.

Plantings were everywhere, containers covered the sidewalks. I took so many container photos that I'm going to dedicate a separate post for them on my Melanie's Perennials blog. I just love the blues of the Hyacinths and Pansies against the gold of the Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea' (creeping jenny).


Here's a close up of those amazing blue Hyacinths, I found them all over the city!


Mertensia virginica (Virginia blue bells) is a plant that's relatively new to me although not new to the plant world. Obviously somebody in the parks dept in Chicago has realized just how well this plant works in the landscape.


Here you can see the Mertensia combined with white Tulips, Narcissus, and backed with an amazing Cercis canadensis (Red Bud) tree.

Unfortunately it's hard to get quality shots when the sun is shining so brightly but I couldn't resist trying to photograph this unusual pairing of Muscari (Grape hyacinth) and an unknown Euphorbia. One thing I wished for was to find plant labels with the names of these beauties but no labels were to be found.


Lots of blues planted in this windowbox and just in case that's not enough blue, there's the reflection of the sky up above.

Myosotis (Forget-me-not) is a biennial. Some people call them short lived perennials but I think they only live 2 years, a biennial in my book. A nice cool combination with yellow daffodils.

At the Lincoln Park Conservatory they had forced into bloom all kinds of plant material. The combination of Lilium and Tradescantia andersonia was breathtaking.

Also at the conservatory I spied this planting of Campanula poscharskyana just cascading out of a window planter. What a charming use of this hardy perennial.

Hope you liked my version of the Chicago Blues, it was all music to me :-)

Melanie