Lantern Viewing Evenings
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Hort Tidbit December 2025: Wintersweet (臘梅)
Beautiful yellow fall color reveals pale yellow blooms beginning on the much-loved wintersweet tree in the Fragrance Courtyard at Lan Su. The December cold has slowly crept in, seeping the garden in the feeling of winter truly on its way. Although most other flowers are long gone, Chimonanthus praecox, known more commonly as wintersweet or…
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Culture Spotlight: China Trip Chapter 1—Suzhou Gardens Behind the Scenes
This special edition of Culture Spotlight will be a four-part series sharing takeaways from a recent trip to our sister city, Suzhou. Enjoy! I’m writing to you just days before Thanksgiving, with the glow of a recent journey still warming me like a little lantern I’m carrying home. This fall, I spent 17 days traveling through four cities in China…
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Culture Spotlight: These are not your grocery store mums
I’ll be honest—I didn’t always get the hype about chrysanthemums. That changed the first autumn I worked at Lan Su Chinese Garden. I walked into the garden one crisp morning and found myself surrounded by chrysanthemums in every imaginable form…