Grandmother's Garden (in Lincoln Park)

  The undulating beds of Grandmother's Garden have flourished on this Lincoln Park site since the early 1890s. This naturalistic garden may have originally been created by Carl Stromback, Lincoln Park's head gardener of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Grandmother's Garden was consciously juxtaposed to the formal "French style" garden surrounding the Bate's Fountain directly across the street. An article published in 1900 explained that one could not find a better example of the two contrasting styles. It suggested that while Grandmother's Garden was a "profusion of flowers of all kinds combined according to color and foliage," the Formal Garden was "an arrangement of set forms and conventional designs." Additionally, this is a perennial garden, while the Formal Garden is composed of annuals.
Historically, the Grandmother's Garden was also known as the Old English Garden. In 1893, when a William Shakespeare Monument was bequeathed to Lincoln Park by Samuel Johnson, director of the Chicago Railroad Company, the Old English Garden was considered a fitting site. A competition to design the monument was won by sculptor William Ordway Partridge, who had studied hundreds of portraits and busts of the Bard of Avon.

The beginning of spring heralds a sea of blue Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica) that has naturalized over many decades and the blooming of one of the oldest Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas) trees.