Visitors see plenty of reds - and whites and pinks - at Cantigny

It was a day to see red.

Lots and lots of red.

Roughly 350 visitors got the chance to visit the Cantigny Park greenhouse Tuesday to check out the Wheaton facility's one-day-only Shades of Crimson poinsettia display.

Cantigny officials said there were about 3,000 plants highlighting more than a dozen varieties of poinsettias - many in vivid reds, but some in pinks and whites, too.

Horticulture staff members were on hand throughout the four-hour event to discuss the plants and answer questions.

It's one of only two times each year the greenhouses are open to the public, Cantigny spokesman Jeff Reiter said. The other comes in May during an annual open house.

Nearly half of the Cantigny poinsettias are destined for the Rotary Club of Central DuPage, which uses them for fundraising. Another 400 plants are for holiday decorating in the museums, restaurants and other buildings throughout the 500-acre Cantigny estate.

Cantigny employees and volunteers also each get a plant and many other poinsettias were for available for sale to the general public.

"We sold a lot of plants," Reiter said Tuesday. "They're the freshest they could possibly be because they've never left the greenhouse."