Humboldt Park Formal Gardens

This formal garden includes colorful annuals, perennials, roses and ornamental grasses in a circular bed pattern of flower beds and walkable lawn paths. At the center of the garden are shallow water features that add the cooling sounds of splashing water. This beautiful space is surrounded on three sides by vined pergolas. There is a pair of bronze American Bison that overlook the garden at the west entrance. For more information about these magnificent statues visit World's Fair Bison (in Humboldt Park) on this site.

Jensen created this circular garden on the site of the old Humboldt Park Conservatory, which was torn down in 1906. He recessed the garden into the ground and enclosed it with crabapple trees and an outer ring of taller canopy trees because he did not want to disrupt the horizontal lines of the landscape. As you can see, the garden has elegant shelter structures known as pergolas that once had vines growing on them. You may notice that the areas with open rafters cast interesting shadows on the brick pavement below. Originally Jensen used an unusual palette of annuals and perennials that included roses and gladiolas. Along the edges of some of the beds and pergolas you may see some square concrete bases. On these, Jensen placed blueish green urns and vases, made of Teco ware, a type of pottery from the Arts and Crafts movement of the early 20th century . Unfortunately, these did not survive. But the garden is still filled with an interesting array of plants. Today, there are only a couple varieties of roses that can be found near the pergolas. But you will also see Concord grape vines in the same area. The curved beds have a lot of foliage that provides interesting shapes, textures and shades. There are castor bean plants, which can grow as tall as 12 feet, and cardoon, an ornamental artichoke that has beautiful silver foliage. In contrast with these, are the black magic taro-- the very large dark purple elephant ears. The annuals include zinnias, purple verbena, butterfly weed, and cleome which is the spider flower.