Join the Garfield Park Conservatory in celebrating 100 years of a beautiful landscape under glass, designed by celebrated landscape architect Jens Jensen, on April 13th. Garfield Park Conservatory displays hundreds of exotic species of plants. The birthday party continues through summer 2008 with a variety of special events and programs, as well as a season-long music and arts festival featuring ethnic folk, jazz and blues musicians, dance troupes and visual artists.
As one of the nation’s most stunning and intriguing botanical havens, the Garfield Park Conservatory is often referred to as “landscape art under glass.” Jensen’s revolutionary design is a poetic interpretation of his beloved Midwestern landscape as it was in prehistoric times. The tropical plantings, water features and stonework were in shocking contrast to the showy displays of typical Victorian hothouses, and his Conservatory quickly became one of the region’s most captivating attractions.
The Conservatory is at the center of a larger story: how nature, urban design, and horticulture helped to shape one of Chicago’s most interesting neighborhoods. As early as the 1870s, architect and engineer William Le Baron Jenney began the verdant tradition of Chicago’s West Side by designing its seminal park and boulevard system. For more than a century, ideas and visions of nature have influenced the development of Garfield Park, its magnificent conservatory, and the surrounding West Side community. Today gardening and the greening movement are a catalyst for reviving this vital part of Chicago.