For nearly three decades, the Crystal Gardens was a free, peaceful getaway at Navy Pier.
But the garden’s massive trees have been left to decay since it was closed to the public two years ago to make way for an immersive theater that still hasn’t been built.
With the garden under threat of demolition as early as next year, the struggling palms are the target of a last-minute, grassroots effort to save them.
The palms were the backdrop for “Garden of Decay,” a nine-day Halloween-themed entertainment event at the pier.
“This small Halloween event was like a metaphor for this garden that’s dying,” said Nate Murawski, who attended the event.
After performing in the Halloween show, Nina Salem and Tex Watson say they learned the plants were at risk of being tossed.
The pair, who run a taxidermy museum in Logan Square called The Insect Asylum, took it upon themselves to haul away as many plants as they could.
They enlisted friends who took plants away by the vanload.
“They told us to take what we could,” Watson said. “Over three days, we probably pulled 250 plants out of this place.”
A week later, most of the plants were in new homes, they said. Only the tall plants remain, including the palm trees standing 20 feet tall or more.
They’re too big for a private home, and Salem said she hasn’t found an organization that wants to take them.
The company moving into the space, Illuminarium, said it will begin demolition in the space early next year.
“I don’t know if [the trees] will be transferred or what,” CEO Alan Greenberg said.
The new space will feature virtual projections of landscapes and other scenery. Current shows are called “Wild: A Safari Experience” and “Space: After Dark” at Illuminarium’s locations in Atlanta, Las Vegas and Toronto.
A contractor was tearing up pavement just outside the garden this week.
Navy Pier said it worked extensively in the fall of 2021 to find new homes for many of the plants.
“Many of the smaller tropical plants and one smaller palm tree were rehomed,” pier spokesperson Bonni Pear said in an email.
“The larger palm trees, some of which had reached the end of their natural lifespan, were too big for any local nonprofit organization to move without significant expense,” Pear said.
The pier declined to give an exact date for demolition of the garden.
The Chicago City Council approved the Illuminarium project in 2021 despite pushback from the community. More than 23,000 people signed a petition to save the garden.
Celine Wysgalla, who started the petition, said it was a “huge disappointment” that the palms were being left to die.
“Those palms have been there for decades,” Wysgalla said. “Illuminarium should take responsibility for the palms by finding a proper new home or incorporating them into their exhibit.”
Crystal Gardens was built as a place “just to relax,” the Sun-Times reported in 1993, two years before the gardens opened. Not “since the late 19th century” has anyone “built a building like this just for the public to enjoy,” John Schmidt, then-chairman of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, said at the time.
The only hope to save the large plants is for a big organization to step up, Salem and Watson said.
Moving the palms would require an expensive crane, Watson said.
The pair said they reached out to the local conservatories, but none could take them.
The Morton Arboretum lacks an indoor garden, its spokesperson said. Conservatories at Garfield Park and Lincoln Park didn’t reply to requests for comment. The Chicago Botanic Garden said it wasn’t involved in talks.
The main obstacle to moving the palms is finding a large enough space, said Brian Austin, co-owner of Chicago-based NPK Associates Inc., which provides horticultural services to businesses.
“They need at least a 30-foot-tall glass conservatory, and those are not being built very often,” Austin said.
Besides the expense of moving the trees, there’s also a risk they may die during transit, he said. Moving them in winter is more difficult because there’s less daylight.
He said it was tragic the plants couldn’t be incorporated into the new space.
“There’s not many of these types of glass houses in Chicago, so to lose this feature is frustrating,” he said.
Salem and Watson learned the plants were in peril during a walk-through of the Garden of Decay show.
Show co-producer Maren Rosenberg incorporated the decaying trees into the show, which explored themes of death, grief and rebirth.
After the show ended, Navy Pier gave the show’s staff permission to take as many plants as they could.
“These are some very valuable plants,” Rosenberg said. “Folks came from all sorts of different communities.”
Christina Schleich, lead organizer at Avondale Gardening Alliance, broadcast an “all-hands-on-deck call” to the group’s 2,200 members.
Because of the short notice, “we weren’t able to put together the plan we were hoping for,” she said. Only about four of their members showed up, she said.
Removing the larger palms proved difficult, she said. Her idea of a local business partner who could take one fell through, Schleich said.
Salem stressed that it was a grassroots effort to save the plants.
“The whole community pulled together to do something really beautiful for this garden before its exit,” she said.
Watson said they “really care about that space and the memories people had there for 30 years. But our hands are tied with what we can do with these big trees.”
