Oak Park Conservatory is a conservatory and botanical garden located in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, United States. It is open daily with restricted hours; a donation is suggested. The conservatory started in 1914 as a community effort to house exotic plants collected during residents' travels. Today's Edwardian-style glass structure was built in 1929 but fell into neglect until 1970, when a group of concerned citizens preserved it. It was then expanded in 2000. The conservatory now provides 8,000 square feet of growing areas, making it the third largest conservatory in the Chicago area, and contains more than 3,000 plants, some of which date back to 1914. The Oak Park Conservatory was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places on March 8, 2005.[1]
Oak Park Conservatory | |
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| Location | Oak Park, Cook County, Illinois, USA |
|---|---|
| Built | 1929 |
| NRHP reference No. | 04001298 |
| Added to NRHP | March 8, 2005 |
Major collections
The desert collection includes three cactus groups (cereus, opuntia, and pereskia), plus succulents including agave, crassula, succulent euphorbias, gasteria, haworthia, and kalanchoe. Woody plants in this room include olive, etrog, fig, date palm, bay, and pomegranate.
The conservatory's orchids and ferns collection holds orchids, Australian tree ferns and other tropic and sub-tropic fern species, as well as begonias, clivia, Ponderosa lemon, sea grape, Strelitzia reginae, and syzygium. The rainforest collection includes anthurium, aroids, banana, cycads, dracaenas, ferns, fig trees, Monstera deliciosa, palms (lady, fishtail, fan, and Canary Island date), papaya, peperomia, pilea, spider plants, as well as a pond with koi, goldfish, and turtles.
In addition to its collections, the conservatory grows about 20,000 bedding plants annually for planting in public parks and sites throughout Oak Park.
See also
Notes
- ^ National Register Information System, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service. Retrieved 25 May 2007.