With more than 12,000 tulip, hyacinth, daffodil, crocus, and muscari bulbs grown especially for the Sunken Garden, The Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s Spring Flower Show opening next week is always one of the Twin Cities’ most colorful rites of spring.
But this season, the plant list in “Minnesota’s most beautiful room” is also taking its cues from Minnesota’s springtime color palette. “Our goal is to make it look a little bit more like a forest,” says Como’s horticultural curator Dr. Lisa Philander.
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.
