Lurie Garden

Beneath the plantings are a garage and a layer of filled ground from a former railroad yard, and even deeper lies the former edge of the lake. The wooden boardwalk runs along the line of an old retaining wall that once held back fill and crosses a strip of shallow water. On either side, the garden is divided into a shady, wet section and one open to the sun, while a nearly five-meter living hedge on a metal frame shields it from the noisy street. Here, perennials, grasses, and bulbs are left standing until the end of winter: the dry stems feed birds and provide shelter for insects.

Piet Oudolf’s first response to the invitation to design this garden was “no.” Ed Uhlir, who led the design of Millennium Park, invited the Dutch gardener to an international competition. Oudolf read the list of participants and decided that he had no chance among the English and American architects. He made just one reservation: he could select the plants better than any of them.

Uhlir did not accept the refusal and suggested joining forces with the person Oudolf considered stronger than himself. This was how the gardener met Kathryn Gustafson, a landscape architect who needed a specialist in perennials. They agreed to divide the work: Gustafson would determine the arrangement of the space, and Oudolf would fill it with plants. Their design won, and for Oudolf this commission became his first major garden in the United States.

The division of responsibilities can still be read in the very layout of Lurie Garden. Gustafson’s team surrounded it with a nearly five-meter living hedge on a metal frame. It shields the plantings from the busy street and depicts Chicago’s “big shoulders” from a line by the poet Carl Sandburg. Inside, the architects created dark and light sections, with a wooden boardwalk over shallow water between them.

This diagonal was chosen because of the history of this particular site. Beneath the garden are a garage and the filled ground of a former railroad yard; even deeper ran the former edge of the lake. The wooden boardwalk follows the direction of an old retaining wall that held back fill and recalls the planks Chicagoans once laid over muddy streets. The dark section was planted with plants suited to shade and wet soil; the light section was left open to the sun.

Oudolf filled this framework with perennials, grasses, and bulbs. He planned the plantings for their full life cycle: after flowering, the stems, seed heads, and shape of the plant remain important. That is why gardeners do not clear the flower beds in autumn. The dry plants remain all winter: birds feed on the seeds, and insects shelter in and beneath the stems. Everything is cut back only at the end of winter, before the first bulbs emerge, and the shredded remains are left on the ground.

The Lurie surname belongs to another human story. Chicago philanthropist Ann Lurie gave the Millennium Park Foundation ten million dollars in memory of her late husband, investment company executive Robert “Bob” Lurie. The money was placed in an endowment for the garden’s permanent care, and the garden received the family name. Bob Lurie died in nineteen ninety, fourteen years before the opening. His surname remained at the entrance, and the income from the donation pays for that same annual work: preserving the stems for winter and cutting them back before the first spring leaves appear.