Posted on: Sunday, September 23, 2007
Fab shades of fall paint Windy City
Advertiser Staff
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The Gardens of the Great Basin at the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe.
ROBIN CARLSON | Chicago Botanic Gardens
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Fall is a fabulous time to visit Chicago. The bright, crisp days of October show the city at its colorful best as the leaves turn and the city is embraced by reds and golds of autumn.
For visitors to the Chicago Botanic Garden in Glencoe, about 25 miles north of Downtown, the experience is even more intense. This year, the garden showcases a sea of extraordinary chrysanthemum displays at the Visitor Center, along the Esplanade, and inside the English Walled Garden and Japanese Garden as well as over the bridge to the main island (the garden comprises 23 islands surrounded by lakes and woodland).
WHAT TO SEE
Fall annuals: A great swathe of pink and purple asters, giant salvias, with red stems and yellow flowers, rich dark purple violas, golden weeping willows and red sugar maples, brilliantly colored aquatic plants, golden grasses and lush perennials or blazing red sumacs ... to name a few.
Frank Lloyd Wright: Garden-scale replicas of Frank Lloyd Wright's most famous buildings, including Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, Taliesin in Wisconsin, Taliesin West in Arizona, Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio in Oak Park, Illinois and Charles Ennis House in California. Other miniature attractions include Mount Rushmore and a Thomas the Tank Engine House. A network of G-scale trains traverse high and low through tunnels, across bridges and around the buildings and American landscapes.
