With support from Como Friends, horticulturists at the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory are designing a more sustainable gardening plan for Como’s exterior spaces

Making Como’s extensive exterior gardens look good is hard work, but Marjorie McNeely Conservatory horticulturist Marie Day gets lots of encouragement to keep at it. 

“One of my favorite things about this job is just how much positive feedback you get from the public,” she says. “I can be out there, working in a garden, maybe even feeling stressed out that something isn’t looking the way I want it to, and then I’ll have 10 people walk by telling me how beautiful it is. I don’t think that’s something most people get to experience in their jobs, and it really lifts you up and makes you feel you’re doing something that matters.”

Day’s latest horticultural project is Gates Ajar, the traditional mosaiculture feature Como gardeners have created for more than a century. Located across Lexington Parkway near Como Lake, this year’s design features Minnesota’s new state flag and seal rendered in a mix of colorful alternanthera and echeveria, a fast-growing succulent. Installing this year’s display of more than 5,000 annuals and 300 bedding plants required more than 100 gardener hours, while maintaining it typically requires 45 minutes or more of watering every day. “It’s a big project and an important tradition,” says Day. “Every year, our goal is to make it a little more creative, and a little more surprising.”

Another project visitors may notice this season is a shift toward more perennials and native plants in garden beds around Como’s campus, as horticulturists replace more traditional tropical annuals. For instance, the Minnesota Garden that greets visitors at Como’s front door will be even more Minnesotan this season with the phased planting of a host of new native plants like rattlesnake master, prairie dropseed, false indigo and prairie alumroot.  

“There are two big reasons for making this shift,” says Day. “One is that we just have a really huge amount of garden space to take care of, and having those perennials established means that we’ll  have more time to bring a higher standard of care to all of our exterior gardens.

“The other reason is, as we think about climate change, having areas that are filled with nothing but tropical plants that need a lot of tending is just not sustainable,” she says. 

“Perennials are more drought tolerant, more tolerant to heat, and are also really good for pollinators.”  

Visitors to the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s historic Palm Dome may notice something different this season—a lot more sunlight.

The brighter feel of the room is the result of an extensive pruning project to remove several older palms that had grown so tall they were crowding into the glass cupola. Unlike species that can be trimmed to grow outward, “the growing point of a palm is at the top of the plant, so the pressure of pushing into the glass would eventually kill the plant,” explains Karen Kleber Diggs, horticultural supervisor. 

The strength of these tropical palms can also put the Conservatory’s historic dome at risk. 

“A couple of years ago, we had one of the palms on the side actually grow up with a very stiff frond that punched its way into the grout” between the cupola’s glass panes, she says. “These are very powerful plants.”

Typically, the  Marjorie McNeely Conservatory works with the city’s forestry department to provide pruning help, but with the spread of emerald ash borer, trimming Como’s tropical trees wasn’t possible this year. That’s where Como Friends stepped in, providing $70,000 in grant funding to help Como’s campus move ahead with tree maintenance in the Palm Dome, the North Garden and a few other locations around campus.

“Grants like this are one of the important ways that Como Friends helps the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory achieve its mission,” says Jackie Sticha, president of Como Friends. “If city funding or park resources are pulled in different directions, community support helps to ensure that Como can move ahead on urgent or emerging maintenance issues.”

New palms—also provided with funding from Como Friends—will take their place as part of a phased succession plan visitors will see in the coming months. While gardeners are always sorry to see 20-year-old palms go away, the extra space has allowed horticulturist Alejandro Balderas to redesign the understory of the palm room. “He’s been utilizing a lot of our bromeliad and orchid collection to create these colorful accent points he calls vignettes that bring a new focal point to the ground cover space,” says Kleber Diggs. “He’s seeing things in that room with fresh eyes, which is something our visitors may notice this season, too.”

For the show, Philander and horticulturists Bo Akinkuotu and Katie Horvath are introducing plant material that reflects Minnesota’s boreal forests and prairies. Visitors will notice birch logs and larger trees, milkweed, catchflies and black-eyed Susans, black pansies, columbine, snap dragons and delphinium, and even mini bogs that mimic the look of Minnesota’s wetlands. The show will also feature skunk cabbage provided by the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden, and the showy lady’s slipper orchid, a recent gift from the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. 

Thanks to your contributions to Como Friends, all of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s rotating flower shows are free to the public. The Spring Flower Show runs daily from March 22 to April 28. 

The St. Paul Winter Carnival Orchid Show is the cure for the mid-winter blahs

With more than 28,000 naturally occurring species, the Orchidaceae family is one of the largest and most diverse of the world’s flowering plants. On January 27 and 28, Marjorie McNeely Conservatory visitors will get a chance to see the cream of the crop at the St. Paul Winter Carnival Orchid Show, a Como tradition for nearly 50 years.

Curating and designing Como’s display this year is horticulturist Alejandro Balderas, who cares about orchids even in his off-hours. “Before I moved to Minnesota from California, I had about 70 plants and 30 cultivars of my own,” he says. While he’s trimmed his personal collection to a more manageable size, there’s a good chance it will grow again once he’s had a look at the newest species and varietals for purchase at the Orchid Show’s marketplace. “There are so  many shapes and sizes, and there’s always something new on the market,” he says. “It makes it hard to resist.” 

Like the tulip mania that hit Europe in the 1600s, orchids had a similar history in the 1800s, when so-called “orchidelirium” sent prices for rare tropical species soaring into the stratosphere. But now with so many hearty varieties widely available in garden shops and grocery stores, orchids are no longer quite as intimidating to curious home gardeners. 

“Orchid growing has become much more transparent because of the internet and with people having access to the literature online,” he says, from groups like the Orchid Society of Minnesota, a co-sponsor of the Winter Carnival Show. “They’re one of the few houseplants that actually flowers consistently,” he says, with colors made to attract pollinators and people stuck indoors during the winter. “Minnesotans seem to really love their orchids,” he says. 

For the show, Balderas and other horticulturists are planning to display more than two dozen of the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s best species, drawn from a large working  collection predominantly featuring plants from Central and South America. Set in the Fern Room, the design will feature a sculpture dedicated to the Conservatory on its 50th anniversary in 1965.

Advanced admission reservations are required to attend the St. Paul Winter Carnival Orchid Show, and tickets are $5 for adults and $4 for Como Friends members, seniors, and children under the age of 12. Visit this link for more information. 

Your support for Como Friends helps to make the Conservation Champions program possible, supporting Como’s talented staff’s participation in conservation partnerships and in their continued professional development. Thank you!

Reusing, reducing and recycling is one of the secrets of Como’s Sunken Garden

Horticulturist Rylee Werden has fond memories of visiting Como with her mother and grandmother. “We always came to see the flowers together, so having the chance to design a flower show that connects with the Winter Carnival Orchid Show is really an honor.”

This season’s Winter Flower Show is a storybook example of an English-style cottage garden, with dense green foliage, deep pink and purple flowers, and a casually unkempt style—as if the garden is bursting out to fill its stone boundaries after years and years of growth.  

“I was really inspired by the plant loropetalum which has a really nice weeping tree form and pretty flowers that I thought would make the pond look sort of enchanted,” says horticulturist Rylee Werden, who designed the show, her first for the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory. “From there I started building in more pinks and snowy whites and icy blues to play with the winter season. And the Winter Carnival Orchid Show coming later this month is what inspired me to use two of the flowers, a snapdragon called ‘Snappy Orchid Flame’, and a Viola called ‘Orchid Rose Beacon’”.

While most of the flowers you’ll see in this season’s show were grown from seed or plugs back in September, many supporting players in the Sunken Garden’s canopy were drafted from the Conservatory’s expansive greenhouse, design choices that are helping to make Como’s five seasonal flower shows more sustainable. For instance, the small birch trees featured in the Winter Flower Show were recently culled from the Charlotte Partridge Ordway Japanese Garden. 

“Visitors seem to really love how they look, and we’re always excited to find a new use for what we already have,” says Werden. In fact, when the winter show is complete, the cuttings will be converted into birch poles for use in next year’s holiday plantings. 

“As often as we can, we also try to give the plants and trees we use in the Sunken Garden a second life somewhere on campus, or in the community,” says Como’s horticultural curator, Dr. Lisa Philander. For years, spring bulbs pulled from the Sunken Garden have been recycled and resold through Como Friends’ Garden Safari Gifts, with proceeds that help pay for the next year’s bulb show. Your contributions to Como Friends are also helping the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory start a new on-site compost system with the capacity to turn tons of spent plant material into rich compost for future flower shows and gardens. 

The diverse color possibilities of Poinsettias are now on display at the Holiday Flower Show, featuring  ‘Ferrara’ red, variegated ‘Tapestry’ plants with yellow & green leaves, and yellow ‘Golden Glo’ Poinsettias. Yellow flowering kalanchoe, hibiscus, and lemon cyprus add tropical accents to one of the most visited flower shows of the year. 

Known as the flor de nochebuena—or Christmas Eve Flower—in their native Mexico, it’s no wonder Poinsettias have become the quintessential plant of the season. Available in  endless shades of reds, pinks, creams, and greens, Poinsettias are among the most economically valuable plants in the world, with nearly 70 million sold each holiday season in the United States alone. 

Marjorie McNeely Conservatory horticulturist Bo Akinkuotu knows just what it takes to make these delicate tropical plants come to life. Back in June, he planted more than 1,000 Poinsettias to ensure they’d be at their peak just in time for the Holiday Flower Show now on display in the Sunken Garden through January 7.

The dazzling colors of Día de los Muertos are the inspiration for the second half of the Sunken Garden’s fall flower show now on display.

“As gardeners, we’re always interested in trying new things in traditional spaces,” says Lisa Philander, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s horticulture curator. “The goal was to create a feeling of undulating waves of color, rather than making each side of the room a mirror of the other.”

The dazzling colors of Día de los Muertos are the inspiration for the second half of the Sunken Garden’s fall flower show now on display. With orange and yellow mums, accented by bright magenta celosia, this season’s flower show is a fiesta for the senses.

One featured flower is the orange marigold, a Mexican native plant known by the Aztec name cempasúchil. A flower that’s strongly associated with the holiday, the color and fragrance of marigolds are said to show departed souls the path to their family homes. Gardening sources report that demand for marigolds has also risen considerably since the 2017 Disney Pixar film Coco, which introduced a worldwide audience to the customs of Día de los Muertos. 

Visitors to the Sunken Garden may also notice that the design of this season’s Fall Flower Show is asymmetrical, breaking up the bilateral design pattern that’s commonly been used in the room. “As gardeners, we’re always interested in trying new things in traditional spaces,” says Lisa Philander, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s horticulture curator. “The goal was to create a feeling of undulating waves of color, rather than making each side of the room a mirror of the other.” 

Always free to visitors thanks to your contributions to Como Friends, the Sunken Garden Fall Flower Show is now on display through November 26. 

Conservation at the Forefront, Free Admission for All

Como Park Zoo & Conservatory is a gateway to the wonders of the natural world, where free admission makes it possible to teach two million children and adults the values of conservation every year. From rare orchids to endangered orangutans, there’s a whole world of wild and precious plants and animals to discover at Como, with family-friendly conservation programs that inspire us to appreciate and protect the planet we love.

On Give to the Max Day, your generosity will help make even more possible at Minnesota’s most visited cultural destination. From providing best-practice care for the animals, to earth-friendly pest control to keep Como’s gardens looking gorgeous, to inclusive programs to train the next generation of keepers and gardeners, your support allows Como Park Zoo & Conservatory to stay true to its mission, teaching us all about the life-giving connections between animals, plants, and people.

And thanks to a matching gift from the Como Friends Board of Directors and generous longtime donors, your gift will be doubled, dollar for dollar, up to $40,000.

Como’s chrysanthemum show has been a tradition since 1915, but you’ve never seen a fall flower show quite like this one! With an “Under the Sea” theme, the display includes anemone mums, green stingray colcassia, spider mums, and succulents that combine to create a cool octopus’s garden vibe in Minnesota’s most beautiful room. Check out this photo preview, and make plans to see it before October 30, when the fall flower show’s second half transforms into a celebration of Dia de los Muertos.

Did you know that the succulents used in the Fall Flower Show are the very same succulents used in the Gates Ajar display this summer!

Open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, the Fall Flower Show is always free to visitors, thanks to your contributions to Como Friends.

With chrysanthemums playing the starring role in this season’s Fall Flower Show, it’s a guarantee that thrips will also be part of the cast. 

Also known to gardeners as thysanoptera or thunderflies, these needle-thin sucking insects love to feed on mums, causing damage to plants, or worse, transmitting viruses from one plant to the next.

Fortunately, Como’s horticulturists have a tiny but mighty weapon to keep thrips from ruining the show. Known as the cucumeris mite, this half-millimeter predator insect has just been deployed throughout the mum crop destined for the second half of the Fall Flower Show. With an appearance like that of a transparent wood tick, and the ability to prey on thrips and survive on plant pollen, these super small super predators play an important role in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s Integrated Pest Management plan. 

“People sometimes think that spraying pesticides is the only way to control pests, but integrated pest management is an approach that combines anything you might do to make a plant healthier, from the condition of the soil it’s growing in, to your nutritional program, to how you’re pruning the plant,” explains Como horticultural supervisor Bryn Fleming. While Como has been a low-pesticide growing facility for decades, Fleming says, “our reliance on beneficial insects has increased more recently,” as the gardening industry embraces more sustainable ways to manage greenhouses and gardens.

While beneficial bugs show great promise in cutting the use of pesticides, monitoring how well predator insects perform can be time consuming and complex. What’s the right dosage of beneficial insects for a particular plant or crop? How do shifts in such inputs as light, water or temperature affect the efficacy of beneficial bugs? Are some pest predators better than others?

To help answer those questions, the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory is now equipped with a new integrated pest management scouting system called IPM Scoutek. Made possible by your support for Como Friends, this new digital technology tracked on a tablet allows horticulturists to collect data from greenhouses and gardens to make even more informed decisions about how to care for crops and manage pests. 

“This technology is used by large-scale growers who are producing bigger agricultural crops, but is also used for nursery or floriculture production.” says Horticulturist Jen Love, who recently shared news about Como’s software scouting system during an American Public Gardens Association symposium at the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Columbus, Ohio. “As far as we know, as a public garden the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory is an early adopter trying this approach, and there’s a lot of interest from other institutions in seeing how this process works. If it’s successful, it’s a model we can share with other botanical gardens.”

As Como’s horticulturists discover what digital technology can do for pest management, Fleming says the Conservatory’s early adopters are already impressed by what they’ve seen. “I think this software is going to help us to keep track of things at a much closer level, so when problems come up we can respond to them even sooner,” she says. “To care for a living collection requires constant adaptation, and this technology will help us be a little more proactive than reactive.”