While many city dwellers might notice a serious lack of snow some years, winter makes its presence felt at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

The first significant snowfall of the season gives the Garden a perfect white coat for winter. What better reason for a walk through the Elizabeth Hubert Malott Japanese Garden?

Many consider winter to be the Japanese Garden’s most beautiful season. Its design emphasizes nature’s forms like clouds, stones, and hills. In winter, pruned magnolias, azaleas, forsythia, quince, as well as smooth lumps of yews and junipers, resemble white boulders or fluffy clouds. Open-pruned pines, wired to maximize long and borrowed views, are natural snow catchers, offering up their own cushions of snow. Even the lanterns are designed to catch and display light snowfall.