LOUIS SULLIVAN ARCH CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

For the opening of the Modern Wing, Tom Wolfe, Horticulturalist at The Art Institute for 31 years asked Roy to design a planting. Wolfe asked that the garden carry the emotions of the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park just across Monroe Ave. Inspired by a painting by Pierre Bonnard called ‘Earthly Paradise’, Roy developed a plant palette using tones from the painting. There was a dynamic between the percentage of color as it mixed with shades of green. This provided a starting point for the garden design. Roy used short, textural mixed grasses as the matrix, blended in repeating plant patterns and brief structural plant groups that added focal points to the flow of the planting.