If you’ll be wandering in the northern reaches of Chicagoland this weekend, Road Trips Gardeners, consider a stop at the Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, Illinois, for the annual exhibition by the Chicago Chapter of Ikebana International Society.

Members will be on hand to discuss the display of traditional Japanese flower arranging.

There’s another chance to see the style this month: the Ikebana Sogetsu exhibition takes place at the Chicago Botanic Garden June 27 and 28, 2015.

Ikebana, one of the traditional arts of Japan, has been practiced for more than six hundred years. It developed from the Buddhist ritual of offering flowers to the spirits of the dead. By the middle of the fifteenth century, with the emergence of the first classical styles, Ikebana achieved the status of an art form independent of its religious origins, though it continued to retain strong symbolic and philosophical overtones.

(Image courtesy of Chicago Botanic Garden)