Understanding the art and aesthetic behind Como’s elegant potted trees

With more than 100 potted trees—including one specimen that’s more than 450 years old—the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s bonsai collection is one of the best in the Midwest with a diverse range of species and styles. But one factor that really sets it apart from other collections may be Minnesota’s harsh winters. “I think our collection may be grown in the coldest climate of any botanical garden collection in the country,” says Reva Kos, the horticulturist who’s shaped the collection for two decades. “In California, you’ll see bonsai everywhere, but here it’s more challenging.”

But by spring, when the risk of frost subsides, Kos starts selecting the best trees in the collection for their big moment in the Mother’s Day Bonsai Show, slated for May 9 and 10. A long-standing Como tradition produced in partnership with members of the Minnesota Bonsai Society, the two-day exhibit features some of Como’s best specimens in the Ordway Gardens’ indoor display and outdoor vitrines, as well as favorites from private collections. As the state’s bonsai aficionados are putting the finishing touches on their most treasured trees, Como Friends asked Kos to share her tips and tricks for bonsai beginners.

Asian Roots: Bonsai has roots that go back to China in 700 AD where crafting elegant potted trees or pun-sai was only for the elite. By the 1200s, bonsai had become a mainstay of Japanese horticulture, spreading through Europe and the West by the late 19th century. As a result, every culture has a favored style, from the densely “helmeted” trees you might see in a European collection, to the airier American style influenced by California bonsai master John Yoshio Naka, who believed branches must “leave room for the birds to fly through.” No matter where they come from, Kos says, bonsai are typically planted in a soilless mixture of pumice, lava rock, and akadama, a granular clay-like material mined from the volcanic soil near Japan’s Mount Fuji. 

Pick the Right Plant: Almost any woody plant or shrub can be formed into a bonsai, but Kos urges beginners to make sure the plant you’re choosing will thrive in the conditions where it will live. “Bonsai are plants, so they generally do best outside, but there are some species that do very well indoors,” she says. “You want to try to mimic the temperature conditions that woody or herbaceous plants would need to grow outside, so if you’ve chosen a plant that requires a period of cold and dormancy to grow, try to create that at home.” If you’re planning to keep your bonsai indoors, tropical and subtropical plants like ficus and podocarpus are good choices for home growing. Ready for a faster start? This month, the Como Friends Gift Shop is featuring dozens of beginner bonsai for purchase. (Como Friends members enjoy 15 percent off every purchase!)

Find Design Inspiration: There are dozens of different bonsai styles, each with their own aesthetic goals. For instance, the forest-style bonsai (Yose-ue) features multiple plants in a staggered formation to create the sense of a deep forest in fine detail. Other styles of bonsai try to recreate the look of a wind-swept tree struggling to survive (Fukinagashi), an upright plant reaching straight for the sun (Chokkan), or the dip and flow of a cascading river (Kengai). Check out Instagram, Pinterest, and other sites for visual inspiration, as well as the many bonsai blogs that provide tips about training these potted trees over time.

Be Patient, Not Precious: As Como’s resident bonsai guru, Kos has the rare ability to see what a tree will look like in five or ten years, training individual trees for years at a time. While this kind of gardening takes great patience, she cautions against being overly precious with your plants. “Anyone can start a bonsai, but it’s harder to learn if you’re afraid to touch it. I really enjoy pruning, so you just have to have the confidence to trim and prune in the way you want it to grow,” she says. “Take your time, because if you’re in a hurry, you can kill your tree if you try to do everything at once. But don’t be afraid to experiment because that’s how you learn the most. When you make mistakes, that’s how you become better.”

Grow Your Community: Once your bonsai hobby takes root, consider joining the Minnesota Bonsai Society, an all-volunteer group whose members have a long history of support for the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s public collection of bonsai. “We have a mutually beneficial exchange, where they help provide volunteers who help us with our collection, while we help generate public interest in bonsai,” Kos says. “The Minnesota Bonsai Society is a great resource and their members are very helpful and excited to share their knowledge.”

Enjoy a sneak peek at part two of Como’s Spring Flower Show, now through June 7

Following the elegant and literary Persephone show, the Sunken Garden has undergone yet another transformation this season for part two of the Spring Flower Show now through June 7. Designed by Como horticulturist Bo Akinkuotu, the display features rich colors in high contrast, and a host of unusual flowers.

“At this point on the calendar, we can safely say we’re in spring,” Akinkuotu says. “So a lot of the plants you’ll see here are not frost tolerant—they’re late spring flowers that feel like we’re getting a little jump on the season.”

Peachy orange blooms like Asiatic lily ‘Lava Joy’, calla lily ‘Havana’, hibiscus ‘Orange Sunset’, and peach-colored begonias were chosen to contrast with deep blue verbena, lobelia, and fragrant heliotrope. Visitors will also notice a few scene-stealers mixed in with more traditional choices. 

“One flower visitors may not have seen before is calceolaria, sometimes called the pocketbook plant, which has these pouch-shaped flowers,” he says. Another is the gladiator allium, a special ornamental onion that reaches heights of five feet, with round purple flower heads that resemble a plant from Dr. Seuss. 

With pollinator-friendly plantings and more sustainable landscape practices, horticulturists at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory are role-modeling the ways you can invite more wildlife into your own backyard

Last fall, as the growing season came to a close, horticulturist Robin Takahashi made a point of keeping the Skipper Garden between Como Zoo’s bird yard and the orangutan habitat in a careful state of decay. Rather than raking up leaves and cutting dead foliage, she kept plant skeletons in place over the winter in hopes of creating an inviting home for the Dakota skipper (Hesperia dacotae), a critically endangered butterfly that was once native to Minnesota’s tall grass prairies. 

“Skipper butterflies, when they’re caterpillars, will wrap themselves up in a blade of grass and nibble on it, so you might never know they’re there,” she says. “Cutting back ornamental grasses in the fall can wipe out their habitat, so instead, I leave about 6 inches of grass into the spring.”

Skipper Butterfly photo taken by Volunteer for the Minnesota DNR

Encouraging Como visitors to invite more pollinators into their own backyards and landscapes is part of the mission of this year’s Party for the Planet, Como’s weekend-long Earth Day celebration powered by Xcel Energy, scheduled for April 25–26. But it’s also become a growing part of the design plan for the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s outdoor gardens. In recent years, Como’s been making a quiet but critical evolution toward more sustainable practices—both to attract the birds, bees, butterflies, and other pollinators that signal a healthy ecosystem, and to mitigate the present and future effects of climate change.

“Plants can get stressed out by the changes in climate that are really abrupt and dramatic,” explains Como’s Bryn Fleming, the horticultural supervisor who oversees all of the Conservatory’s exterior gardens. “For instance, as we’ve seen more really heavy rain in June over the last couple of seasons, a lot of home gardeners may be noticing that their lilacs are getting really cranky, and are more susceptible to a fungal disease that’s more prevalent when things are super wet and warm.” 

As Como horticulturists encounter these trends, they’re taking a close look at the care, feeding, and cultivation of every corner of Como’s 18-acre campus to ensure the flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees they install this season can be sustained for the long term. “It’s a process that every gardener should probably be doing right now,” Fleming says, “starting with the question, how much time do you actually have? How much water do you want to use, and how often? Are you planting something that’s prone to disease, and will you have to use chemicals to keep it looking great? In a way, it’s about being more realistic about what will last, and rethinking some of our choices as we go forward.”

That approach is well underway in the Minnesota Garden that greets visitors at Como’s front door. Originally installed a decade ago with native and adaptive plants, horticulturist Marie Day has been leading the garden’s evolution toward exclusively native plants, which have the advantage of requiring less water, and being more drought tolerant. 

The Enchanted Garden, opposite the Conservatory’s historic entrance, is also undergoing a shift. “In the past there has been a heavy reliance on traditional annual bedding plants, which require heavy amounts of weekly watering,” says assistant gardener Jake Frechette. “Now we are highlighting the power of perennials and self-sown annuals, and we also leave this garden standing over the winter, as the spent stems and leaves provide cover and the seedheads provide food over winter for the critters.”

Frechette has also been reimagining the steep slope around Como’s Frog Pond as an ornamental meadow, adding clover, wildflowers, and spring bulbs to a hard-to-mow section of traditional turf, while creating more inviting viewing spaces where visitors can spread a blanket. “It’s a great example of how you can turn your turf into a multispecies collection or garden,” says Fleming. “A lot of people are interested in moving away from grass in their lawns toward plants that can harbor more birds and insects, but it can be hard to envision. This is a great way of showing visitors what grass looks like when you don’t cut it and start incorporating other species.” 

All around Como Park Zoo & Conservatory, visitors may also notice new plantings of parsley, cilantro, dill, and fennel—ideal host plants for supporting black swallowtail caterpillars. “We are treating it as a little experiment, to see which herbs the local butterfly population prefers,” says horticulturist Rylee Werden. “While it’s more commonly known that adult butterflies need flowers for nectar to eat, those same insects need host plant foliage to eat, so planting extra herbs this year is a great way to support butterfly habitat throughout the season, and through their whole life cycle. It might help make gardeners less upset when a caterpillar is chomping their garden to know it will turn into a beautiful butterfly.”

Every Wednesday morning, Como volunteer Paul Storch arrives hours before Como’s public opening, drains the water from the pool at the center of the Palm Dome, collects the coins visitors have tossed in through the week, and contemplates “Crest of the Wave,” the beaux arts bronze created by sculptor Harriet Frishmuth. 

While the sculpture, famously modeled more than a century ago by the dancer Desha Delteil, has been delighting Como visitors for decades, Storch takes a more critical view. A retired museum conservator, he dusts and details the iconic artwork, while studying how the statue’s wax coating is standing up to the elements, noting where minerals and moisture might be building up. From there, he’ll go on to clean and polish the bronze plaques and brass kickplates all around the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory, one of the most beloved buildings on Minnesota’s roster of sites on the National Register of Historic Places.

Taking care of Como’s treasures is a team effort that requires the collaboration of Como’s maintenance staff, horticulturists, community volunteers, and outside contractors. Earlier this winter, all of those forces came together to tend to Como’s two most iconic sculptures, “Crest of the Wave” in the Palm Dome, and “Play Days” in the Sunken Garden. 

1). When decades of wear and tear split the copper tubes feeding water to the bubbling frogs on “Play Days,” Como entrusted their replacement to KCI Conservation, a Minneapolis-based art conservation firm. Following a short stay in the studio of conservators Laura Kubick and Kristin Cheronis, the statue was returned to the Sunken Garden for a coordinated treatment and training session about caring for the fountain bronzes.  

2). Como horticulturist Bryn Fleming helps give the statue a full cleaning, removing accumulated grime and buildup on the metal. During the process, older wax is stripped from the statue to allow conservators to reapply a new protective layer. 

3). Using a propane torch, conservators gently heat the bronze surface and apply a thin coat of hot wax. Once it dries, the surface is buffed for a second coat of cold wax. This layered wax system can protect the statue from moisture and other irritants for a year or longer.

The goddess of spring is the spark behind the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s latest flower show

The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s new horticultural curator, Ray Watson, takes a storytelling approach to plants, and for this season’s spring flower show, they’re finding inspiration in an ancient tale of love, loss, and renewal—the Greek goddess Persephone. Maiden of flowers, queen of the underworld, and goddess of new growth, Persephone’s story is so strongly rooted to the rebirth of spring that Watson couldn’t resist using this Greek myth as the creative spark for their first seasonal flower show in the Sunken Garden. 

Bringing a sustainability-driven and artistic lens to the exhibition, Horticulturist Rylee Werden and Horticulture Curator Ray Watson contribute a vision that pairs environmentally conscious practices with expressive planting design, and flower choices. Their work highlights innovative uses of seasonal materials, thoughtful resource stewardship, and immersive compositions that reframe the Sunken Garden as both a literary story and a living work of art.

“When you’re designing for this room, having a theme is an interesting creative challenge that forces us to work within the constraints of the story we’re trying to tell, and to narrow the plant options in a way that allows [visitors the chance] to really focus on some new and possibly unexpected choices,” Watson says. The show is the first in what will be a full year of seasonal flower shows all organized around the idea of the “Magic of Como,” from a fantastical  Alice in Wonderland–inspired summer flower show, to a mystical witch’s garden planned for autumn. “I prefer art to have a narrative that explains what the creator wanted to show and tell, and with stories like these, there are so many aspects we can illustrate through our flower selection.” 

Here’s how some of the flowers and features you’ll see in the spring show are connected to Persephone’s ageless story, told from Homer’s time to Hadestown. 

The first half of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s Spring Flower Show runs from March 20 through April 26, and is free to every visitor thanks to your contributions to Como Friends. Thank you!

Show you care this Valentine’s season with a very special delivery for the animal lovers in your life! Get your animal sponsorship sweetheart deal on this adorable trio of sloth, flamingo, or polar bear mini-plush—plus a Valentine’s card and gluten-free candy—for only $25. A great gift for nature lovers of all ages, sweeten the deal with two for just $45, or three for $65.

To get your last-minute Valentine’s minis, please visit the Como Friends Gift Shop at Como Park Zoo & Conservatory!

This season’s Winter Flower Show brings color and light into Minnesota’s most beautiful room

When Como Park Zoo & Conservatory posted a preview of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s new Winter Flower Show on social media, designer Isaac Zaman braced himself for a possible backlash: His first-ever flower show design coincided with the Conservatory’s plans to remove the Italian cypress that have long stood at the far end of the Sunken Garden.

“One of the issues we’ve always had with the Sunken Garden is that it’s not bright enough for many plants, and changing the room structurally actually lets in more light,” he says. “But we know people can get very attached to the way things have always been, so we were kind of nervous about what people would say. About half of the people who commented were like, ‘Why would you do that when they’ve been there forever?’, and the other half were like, ‘Oh, interesting…can’t wait to see what comes next.’”

The current Winter Flower Show, now on display through March 15, features a mix of old favorites and new featured plants, with a cool palette of South African veltheimia bulbs, lavender azaleas, pink and white camellias, tropical hibiscus, and more. “I wanted to pay homage to some of the history that’s happened in the room by bringing in some of our accent plants, jasmine topiaries and some lemon cypress. But I also wanted to move the room in a new direction where our interests can always be changing,” Zaman says.

One of the less familiar flowers visitors may notice are Love-in-a-Mist, Nigella damascena.

 “They’re a wonderful aromatic crop that also has these really funky flowers that look quite alien, and if they manage to go off and bloom in the room it’s going to be something very new,” he says. Visitors may also notice the brighter feel of the room, and vignette arrangements that invite viewers to take in the room at different elevations.

“My goal is to bring it all closer to the people, and to add vertical elements to the lower parts of the room that makes you appreciate the size of the space, and the light,” he says.

Nearly 700 poinsettias just made their debut as part of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s annual holiday flower show. After being relocated to Como’s Visitor Center last year to accommodate the construction of the Sunken Garden’s new ADA-accessible ramps, the beloved seasonal flower show has returned to its roots this season.

“I would say this year’s show is traditional, but with a twist,” says Como horticulturist Bo Akinkuotu, who designed the show, now on display through January 4. 

Fans of TikTok’s viral “Ralph Lauren Christmas” vibe will definitely like the rich red bracts featured in more traditional varieties such as Ruby Red, Pure White, and Jubilee Red. Visitors will also discover outside-the-box accent plants such as Duranta, Kalanchoe, Alyssum, Dusty Miller, and Green Envy poinsettias, an arresting chartreuse varietal.

“There are some camps that really prefer the familiar, traditional reds, and others that want to see something new every time they come to the Sunken Garden,” he says. “With this show, we’re trying to strike a balance by featuring some familiar favorites along with some new elements.”

As many home gardeners know, cultivating these temperamental tropical plants in the cold of winter takes careful planning and attention to detail. “They can be a little bit fussy as a houseplant, and most people probably don’t have the patience for it,” he says.

As in years past, poinsettias will be available for purchase in the Como Friends Gift Shop throughout the holiday season, with every sale helping support the plants and animals we all love at Como.

In fact, Akinkuotu started preparing for the show several months ago, planting more than 1,500 poinsettias and accent plants to create adequate replacements for plants that may fade or lose their leaves during the course of the show. During the final eight weeks of the growing cycle, shades were drawn over the poinsettia growing area to help bring them into bloom. Plunging the plants into darkness for at least 13 hours a day is the key to creating the brightly colored bracts that make them a holiday favorite. 

Como visitors can enjoy a profusion of poinsettias in the Sunken Garden, daily through January 4. Thanks to your contributions to Como Friends, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s five seasonal flower shows are always free to visitors. 

Horticulturist Rylee Werden plays with perspective in the first half of the Fall Flower Show with the Parallax View

The second half of the Fall Flower Show features a saturated palette and poisonous plants

After a sunny start to the Fall Flower Show, the mood in Minnesota’s most beautiful room has gone a little Goth, with the introduction of a new palette of saturated black, red, and purple chrysanthemums, and the third Mum color is a light pink and white bicolor flower, “Spring Pink”, to contrast the dark colors. 

“After the brightness of the first half of the show, you’ll notice a very different feel to the room with these deeper, darker colors,” says horticulturist Rylee Werden, who designed both halves of the Fall Flower Show, now on display through November 30. 

In keeping with the Halloween feel of the season, visitors have been very interested in a featured tomato-relative—the Naranjilla plant, Solanum quiotense—a variety known as “bed of nails” for the seemingly blood-letting spikes on its leaves. Complementing the dark traditional mums are purple datura, a poisonous plant that Werden grew from seed she collected at home. 

“They’re a favorite with visitors because they do smell great, but you shouldn’t eat them!” she says. 

Thanks to your contributions to Como Friends, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory is open every day of the year and is always free to visitors. The Fall Flower Show runs through November 30, and the Holiday Flower Show begins December 5. 

If you’d like a sneak peek at Como’s traditional Poinsettia display, Como Friends donors and members are invited to a Special Access Event on December 4.

Como’s fall chrysanthemum show has been a tradition since 1915, the same year that Como’s historic Como Conservatory first opened to the public. Around the world, the chrysanthemum is seen as a symbol of longevity and happiness, but in the Midwest, the fall flower’s rich coloring and spicy scent also remind us that winter’s not far away. “That’s why it’s a great time to slow down, and enjoy the changing colors, which I think visitors will see reflected in the room,” Werden says. 

Mums also signal the important role that fall’s flowering plants play in fostering healthy ecosystems. “In outdoor gardens, especially those with native plants, fall flowers are so important to feeding those pollinators before their big migrations,” she says. “Flowers like aster and goldenrod give our insects and our wildlife that last bit of juice or food they need to get them through the winter.” To see those connections, Werden suggests that visitors also stop by the Minnesota Garden, a collection of native and adaptive plants in front of Como’s Visitor Center, where horticulturists over-winter native plants to benefit birds and other wildlife. “It’s a more natural lens on what we do in the display garden to signal fall, with seed heads and plants that look ready for harvesting, like chard, broom corn, and celosia flowers.” 

Cultivars of some of these native plants will be featured in the second half of the Fall Flower Show, which will be on display from October 24 through November 30. Thanks to your support for Como Friends, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s five seasonal flower shows are always free to visitors. 

With help from a Conservation Champions grant, Como horticulturists are calling attention to one of Minnesota’s most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems.

With its glossy leaves and deep red and purple coloring, the pitcher plant is one of Minnesota’s most captivating natives. So captivating, in fact, that when insects are drawn into its invitingly vase-like body, they soon discover there’s no way out. Tiny, down-drafting hairs inside the plant make it impossible for prey to find purchase before being drowned and digested by this carnivorous plant. 

Native to Minnesota’s peatlands, pitcher plants are just one of the fascinating featured players in a trio of “mini bogs” floating this season in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s Water Gardens. Created by Como horticulturists Bo Akinkuotu and Victoria Housewright, these miniature peatlands—and new interpretive signage nearby—are part of a larger Como Friends’ Conservation Champions project designed to call attention to the beauty, diversity, and environmental benefits of the region’s expansive bogs. 

A Growing Partnership

One of the best places to see this unique ecosystem is in northern Minnesota’s Sax-Zim Bog, a three-hundred square mile peatland about an hour’s drive northwest of Duluth. Well known to birders who flock there to see northern owls, warblers, finches, and other boreal birds, the bog is just as impressive for its diverse plant life, which includes more than 750 species of wildflowers and terrestrial plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, mosses, and ferns.

“Bogs are having a moment and this is definitely one to see, so we came up with the idea of building a partnership with the Friends of the Sax-Zim Bog, a support organization like Como Friends,” says Housewright. Together, Housewright and Akinkuotu wrote a Conservation Champions request proposing a donation to help the organization buy additional land to conserve, as well as the opportunity to bring home a sampling of the bog’s most interesting plants to expand Como’s educational collections. “We wanted it to be a partnership. They’re the ones with the expertise and resources to protect and preserve the bog,” she says, “and here at Como we have nearly two million annual visitors that we can help get excited not just about this incredible ecosystem, but also about why conserving bogs matters so much for climate change.”

All Sax-Zim Bog photographs taken by Naturalist Kelly Beaster

Wild Collecting for Como

In June, the pair traveled north to work with a naturalist at Sax-Zim Bog who helped them to identify and wild collect some of the peatland’s most notable species, like pitcher plants and sundews, leatherleaf and bog bean, pink lady’s slippers and heart-leaved twayblade. To minimize impact on other plants, the pair took only tiny samples and cuttings. “You can’t really dig in an environment as soggy as that—instead you’re just gently untangling roots from one plant to the next,” Akinkuotu explains.

The team took home nearly 60 individual plants that are now taking root behind the scenes in Como’s 30,000-square-foot greenhouse. Once established, Akinkuotu says he’s looking forward to incorporating more of these bog beauties beyond the Water Garden, where the “mini bogs” have already been a big hit with visitors—and with volunteer ducks who’ve been caught nestling in the moss, grasses, and pitcher plants. 

“Even at this scale, you can see these mini bogs creating their own little biomes. We come out here to care for them every day and discover new spiders that have started webbing, more and more bugs that are attracted to these plants, and little tadpoles and frogs that will actually move in,” he says. “By bringing a little more attention to the Sax-Zim Bog, we want people to see how special these places are—and to know that conservation isn’t just something that happens far away. It’s right here at home.”

Bog plants in order of appearance: bog bean, bog rosemary, pitcher plant, bog laurel, star flower, Labrador tea, sundew, lantern sedge, cotton grass