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This Year's Design Emphasizes Renewal, Inspiration
Chanhassen, Minn. (April 1, 2010) - To celebrate spring, the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum gardens will soon burst forth in a grand display of more than 32,000 tulips and 6,000 pansies - all in a palette of pinks, yellows and violets. The most dramatic displays are expected to appear around Mother's Day, which falls on Sunday, May 9, this year. (April 23rd: Editor's note: Tulips actually began blooming three weeks early - in mid-April this year - and are expected to peak prior to Mother's Day.)
"These colors combined together will create feelings of happiness, optimism, enlightenment and renewal," explains landscape gardener Duane Otto who led a dedicated garden crew in planting thousands of bulbs last fall.
"As you enter the Arboretum, you will experience a large stunning mixture of 3,600 double tulips. These varieties are ‘Yellow Mountain,' ‘Blue Spectacle' and ‘Upstar,'" he continues.
"As you stroll from the parking lots to the Oswald Visitor Center, you will pass by a 10,000-bulb narcissus planting and you will be greeted by a large planting of 14 varieties of flowering tulips all in the abovementioned colors. The entry planters will be arranged with Japanese maple, wax-leaf privet, Euonymus ‘Silver King,' assorted tulips, violas, pansies, snapdragons and nemesias," elaborates Otto.
Later this spring, the Arboretum also will feature an eye-popping display in its Mary L. Griggs Annual Garden. Inspired by the famed Keukenhof Garden of the Netherlands, this planting comprises 17,975 bulbs of mainly late flowering tulips in large drifts of color. One of the 10 beds will feature a special mixture of lily flowering tulips which include Tulipa "Marsette" (a rosy pink), Tulipa "Cristula" (a lemon yellow) and Tulipa ‘Purple Dream' (a deep purple).
The Snyder Building sidewalk will showcase a delightful mixture of Tulipa ‘Menton' (a rosy pink), Tulipa ‘Cum Laude' (dark violet) and Tulipa ‘Blushing Lady' (sunset-flamed soft pink blending to soft yellow). The Spiegel Garden, fronting the building, will be festooned in alliums, tulips, narcissus and hyacinths, a real day-brightener! Containers on the Snyder front terrace will overflow with Viola Cornuta (Johnny jump-up), snapdragons, nemesias and assorted tulips. Look for a bed mixture of pink and yellow tulips (‘Pink Lemonade'), as you walk into the building.
On the Morgan Terrace, behind the Snyder Building, containers will bloom with assorted tulips, violas, pansies, snapdragons and nemesias with boxwood and euonymus. The Sarah MacMillan Garden will be highlighted by tulips, hyacinths, scillas, crocus, violas and alliums.
The De Vos Home Demonstration Garden will dedicate on bed to a very unique mix of the tallest tulips available and another bed to a 3-foot double tulip in drifts of pink, yellow and violet. Be sure to check the large drift planting of large flowering pansies by the Keating Greenhouse.
The Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, the largest public garden in the Upper Midwes, is part of the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences and a community and a national resource for horticultural and environmental information, research, and public education. It is located 9 miles west of I-494 on Highway 5 in Chanhassen and open 363 days a year. Admission is $9 adults; free for members & youths 15 and younger.
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