Sunday, June 7, 2015

Garden Visit: Bickelhaupt Arboretum



Yesterday was my husband's and my 17th anniversary, and we had a nice outing with our children to Clinton, Iowa for the day, a drive of about an hour-and-a-half from our house. Our first stop was for lunch at the Candlelight Inn restaurant, which is located right on the edge of the Mississippi River, and because the weather was ideal -- mid-70s, sunny and with a pleasant light breeze -- we greatly enjoyed eating our meal on the restaurant's large elevated deck overlooking the river.

Then we visited the Bickelhaupt Arboretum, which is now owned and managed by Clinton Community College, but was established by Bob and Frances Bickelhaupt on their 14-acre property on the edge of Clinton, starting in the 1970s. The centerpiece of the Arboretum is the Heartland Collection of Dwarf and Rare Conifers, begun in 1990, and which in 2012 was named a Reference Garden by the American Conifer Society.

The collection is truly impressive. My husband and I are thinking about planting more conifers in our gardens, and our visit was very inspiring -- the variety of shapes and colors and textures of the different trees was extraordinary. The trees were uniformly healthy and vibrant, their placement was artistically pleasing and the simplicity of the conifer-only design was very appealing.

Don't get me wrong: my love of flowers is still paramount, but it would be nice to have some areas of my gardens that look as good (or maybe even better) in winter as in the growing seasons. I have been thinking about redesigning my North Border to include some evergreen trees and shrubs for winter interest, and our visit has provided me with much inspiration to do so.

Here are some photos of some of the highlights of the Bickelhaupt Arboretum:

The best section of the Arboretum!

The beginning of the path through the conifer collection. I love how the new growth on the low shrub at left is glowing in the sun (the sign was missing from the specimen, so I don't know what it is, unfortunately).

A lovely wooden bridge through the trees.

You can see the wide variety of the conifer trees. In the background on the other side of the stream at the bottom of the property is a large area of deciduous trees, many of them impressive in size.

The bench is made from stones that were originally cut to build a local building in
the 1850s. When the building was dismantled, the stones were purchased and given to
the Arboretum. We all thought that the tree to the left (a Bruns Weeping Serbian Spruce)
looked like an Ent, the tree creatures from the Lord of the Rings.

I particularly like the the gold-colored conifers.


Two more "tree monsters" schlepping along together ('Wingle's Weeper' Norway Spruce). 

The arboretum was admirably well-maintained, with very few weeds in the neatly edged and mulched beds, and trim, orderly lawn and paths.

A closeup of the beautiful cones on a tree that disappointingly did not have a sign -- most of the plants did have signs, but a few were missing.

The other areas of the garden weren't nearly as extensive as the conifer collection, but they were still nicely planned and enjoyable to walk through. The Hosta collection labeled the cultivars, so it was useful for people who wish to add to their own collections of Hostas. I saw several I'd like to have.

The Peony Garden contains about 30 peonies, including intersectional and tree peonies, as well as the old-fashioned herbaceous kind. This was definitely the right time to visit this part of the garden.

The Butterfly Garden will not be in full bloom until later in the summer, but it was still nice to see how it was designed, as we have been thinking about adding a butterfly area to our own gardens. In the background you can see that the Arboretum was set up for a wedding later that afternoon.

I found the undulating topography along the winding creek absolutely fascinating -- sinuous and dramatic. My photo certainly doesn't do it justice.


I highly recommend a visit to the Bickelhaupt Arboretum if you are close to Iowa or traveling along the Mississippi River, especially if you have an interest in conifers. We greatly enjoyed our visit and came away full of ideas for our own gardens. The Arboretum is open every day from dawn to dusk and is free to enter.


On the way home, I saw this field of wild mustard near our house glowing in the sun and had to stop and take a photo. It was really quite magnificent, a whole field of bright gold that my camera couldn't fully capture.

I hope you are also enjoying visits to inspiring gardens -- we gardeners can easily become preoccupied with our own gardens, particularly at such a busy time of year, but it's important to see other gardens to inspire us to improve our own -- plus it's just fun to enjoy a garden without the need to weed.... Thanks for reading! -Beth

12 comments:

  1. First of all I must say I love that scene of the wild mustard field, beautiful. Always interesting to visit an arboretum or public garden to get inspiration. Wonderful overviews of the conifer department. You are so right to put evergreens in the garden for winter silhouette and it´s always exciting to find the most beautiful and suitable ones for the garden. Wish you a lot of pleasure and success!

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    1. Thanks for your kind comment, Janneke! I'm so glad you stopped by. -Beth

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  2. Belated Happy Anniversary Wishes.

    I enjoyed my visit to Bickelhaupt Arboretum with you - your pictures are lovely, thank you.

    All the best Jan

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    1. Thanks for coming along on my garden visit, Jan! I'm glad you enjoyed it. :-) -Beth

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  3. What a lovely place. We are in that area from time to time and I would really like to visit. Wish I had more room for conifers but there were lots of old, old maples here when I came so they are taking up most of the sunshine.

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    1. Yes, Bickelhaupt Arboretum is just on the other side of the river for you, living in Illinois. I hope you get a chance to visit it and that you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks for reading! -Beth

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  4. Belated anniversary best wishes to you and your husband. An aboretum is a good place to see rare specimen trees and the one you visited looks very interesting. I especially like weeping conifers. I'm sure the visit has inspired you and you'll have a lot of enjoyment planning an area in your garden that will add structure and visual interest especially in the winter months. It's the Open Garden Project season here in England and I'm hoping to visit at least one local garden as well as planning a visit to a country house and estate for our anniversary outing in a couple of weeks time. I've been catching up with posts on your own garden which I've missed since we've been away. The irises and peonies are impressive - some lovely colours. I would love to have more variety myself if only the English garden was bigger.

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    1. Hi Linda, I'm sure you're spoiled for choice of amazing gardens to visit near your home in England -- I hope you have a wonderful outing on your own anniversary. Thanks for reading! -Beth

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  5. Ok Beth... now you're talking... more conifers... yes! Don't wait until you're old like me to get into them. Iowa is a mecca of conifer people and you have wonderful opportunities to get great advice from them... my advice is be a bit careful about pushing the zone limitations too much... I'm paying a big price for not heeding that these past two winters. I also realized it's been many years since we visited the Bickelhaupt so will definitely do an overnighter there sometime in the next month or so... Happy Anniversary as well... Larry By the way... the tree with the cones is an Abies of some sort... very likely a Koreana and possibly Abies koreana 'Aurea' ... although it's hard for me with my limited knowledge to tell from the photo...

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    1. Hi Larry, I was hoping you'd read this and be able to aid me with identification of that tree with those beautiful cones -- thanks! I hope you get a chance to visit the Bickelhaupt Arboretum again soon; we really enjoyed it and it seems like the kind of garden you would like too. I'm looking forward to having more conifers in my garden, and it's in large part because it was in your garden that I saw just how beautiful they can be. Thanks! :-) -Beth

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  6. Happy Anniversary! What a gorgeous collection of conifers! Such unusual looking ones (love the Ent look-alike!) That winding creek is so interesting. I wonder how they get it to look so nice and manicured like that. What a great place to visit!

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    1. Hi Indie, I wondered that about the creek too -- maybe they use a weed trimmer to trim along it, or perhaps they have some kind of special trimmer they use for such irregular areas? A mystery.... Thanks for reading and for your well wishes! -Beth

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