Hope for the Healing Planet Garden

The Hope for the Healing Planet Garden exhibit at the Chicago Flower & Garden Show is another Asian inspired garden. It has a more natural feel to it than Reflections because it uses a lot of wood.



This is a view of the garden from the top level of the hall floor. You can click on it for a slightly larger view. When I was up there taking photographs the attendees of the Chicago Flower & Garden Show were getting a kick out of the real birds in the hall that kept landing on the roofs.

Hope for the Healing Planet has three circular tilting rooftop gardens that represent planets and the plant material is hardy to Zone 5. I really like these rooftop gardens because I never would have thought of having them tilted this way. The other rooftop gardens on display are either flat roofs or pitched and from above these three just stand out.

The hardwood used to build the decking is farm-harvested and the water in the ponds is recycled rain water. The Shoji screens on the right are opaque allowing you to see just silhouettes of the people who are walking up the ramp into the garden. From my understanding the circular roofs are a teaser of the 16,000-square-foot rooftop evaluation garden opening at the Botanic Garden's Rice Plant Conservation and Science Center in September.

Related post from the Chicago Flower & Garden Show:
Greening Up
Reflections: An Asian Inspired garden
Rooftop Garden of the Future
Garden Marketplace