Water is life.
Coming from the land of ten thousand lakes, the most striking contrast that is readily apparent when talking gardens with folks in Denver, is the focus on xeriscaping, or gardening with plants that require no irrigation or watering to survive. I had guessed that this may be an emerging trend here as I noticed the billboards on my way from the airport exclaiming, Denver Water, Use Only What You Need! When you compare Denver’s average annual rainfall of almost 16 inches, to the nearly 30 inches that fall every year in Minneapolis it becomes easy to see why xeriscaping is so much more prominent in Denver. The Denver Botanic Gardens offered excellent examples of this style of gardening implemented to varying degrees, from alpine gardens and dryland mesa that required no additional watering to the slightly more lush, plains gardens.
These high altitude gardens were filled with plants that were unfamiliar to this river valley gardener. I found several types of agave, many different species of grass that I’d not seen before, cactus that grew in forms both strange and elegant, and giant wisened yucca plants with foliage as sharp as the mountain sun.
Perhaps the most striking thing I learned about the water in Denver is that it is against the law for citizens of Denver to collect their rainwater. While I was assured that many of the gardeners here stealthily collect rainwater in their back yards, no one that I talked with about it could offer any explanation as to why gathering rainwater was made illegal here in Denver. I can easily imagine city hall being overrun with angry shovel and hoe wielding protesters if politicians in Minneapolis tried to interfere in such a way with our gardening practices.
The More Things Change….
Though some of the gardens that I experienced in Denver were planted with species that I barely recognized, much of what I saw was very similar to the gardens I’m familiar with at home. I saw some of my favorite plants growing throughout the Botanic Gardens. Lady’s mantle, black eyed susan, plume poppy, and persicaria polymorpha all showed off their long lasting blooms. Some of the annuals that I love to work with such as verbena bonariensis, sweet potato vine, and ensete banana were used as accents throughout the gardens just as they are in Minneapolis.
Grasses are a key textural element here in Denver gardens just like back home. I saw familiar prairie grasses such as panicum, big and little blue stem, and many varieties of miscanthus.
I noticed that shade gardens here are designed in ways that I’m fairly accustomed to. Though I didn’t see many ferns, hostas, or astilbes, I did see all the same shady ground covers such as perennial vinca and moneywort splashed beneath under-story trees and shrubs like dogwood and viburnum. Along a shaded stream that runs through the Japanese garden ligularia hang lazily over the water crowded in by dwarf iris, and bergenia.
Giant buddleja butterfly bush growing to ten feet tall were a reminder of the generally warmer winters Denver offers. While we can grow these fragrant shrubs in Minneapolis, they often live fewer years, and they certainly don’t grow so tall as the bitter winter winds freeze off established branches forcing Minnesota buddleja to grow from the ground up every spring. Seeing all of these recognizable forms, flowers, and foliage was like visiting with old friends who have moved across the country. While they’re the same old plants that I’ve always known, they’re all somehow changed as a reflection of their new environments.
Garden Highlights
Plants are but one form of media used to decorate a garden. Visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens I was reminded of the fact that a gardeners pallet is limited only by their imagination. Land forms, sculptures, boulders, pathways made of various materials, and even paintings were found decorating these showy gardens.
I was fortunate enough to visit during an ongoing exhibition titled Urban Nature, which highlights the paintings of various urban artists juxtaposed with the verdant growth of the gardens. Some of the paintings seemed to take on extra meaning due to their placement. In one particularily striking contrast an image of a sleeping woman painted to look as though light was being reflected off a body of water and onto her is placed behind a dry border of bristle cone pine. Seeing such a flowing, lovely image displayed in this harsh context reminded me that the horrible and the beautiful of this world are two sides of the same coin, inextricably linked.
Inside and Out
No visit to Denver’s botanical gardens could be complete with out a visit to the tropical conservatory. The 300 days a year of sunshine found in the mile high city provide ample light to fill this conservatory with verdant growth. Walking into this room, I suddenly found myself surrounded by the jungle. I wasn’t at all surprised to see chubby gold and white koi swimming through the stream inside the conservatory, but when a green gecko popped his head out in front of me, I began to hope there weren’t any snakes eyeing me hungrily from the treetops. The little gecko seemed to be just as surprised to find me wandering through his jungle home and he wasted no time scampering off.
The building housing the conservatory was home to several other features of the Denver Botanic Gardens, including an impressive and very misty cloud forest room, a newly installed rooftop garden, and an amazing library stocked with thousands of books dealing with botany, gardening, landscape, and horticulture. I even heard from more then one source that the botanic garden is planning a green wall on this same building.
So Many Gardens, So Little Time
Visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens turned me into the proverbial kid in the candy shop. To be sure, my eyes twinkled at the beauty I found, and I was completely overwhelmed trying to take it all in. I can say with certainty that any future trip to Denver for me will include a lengthy visit to these botanic gardens. Finding this oasis of garden pleasure in the middle of the city was as pleasant a surprise as I could’ve asked for while traveling. Seeing the new and different combined so readily with what’s familiar, and finding the folks of this town so easy to talk with showed me that though I don’t live here, in some way or another, Denver is my home.
"I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within." ~Lillian Smith
“There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson
“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” ~ Henry Miller
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The Seed Vol. 19 Sept. 20, 2008 A Giving Tree Gardens Newsletter
Photos by Russ Henry ©2008 ,Text by Russ Henry ©2008 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
Plant Profile: Yucca
Yucca is one of the most wide spread native plants in North America. Preferring arid or semi-arid areas, yucca can be found growing from rocky deserts and badlands, to prairies and grassland, from mountainous regions, to light woodland, and coastal sands. Some varieties of yucca grow even in sub-tropical and semi-temperate zones.
The visual beauty of this architectural plant is only a grain of sand in the desert of uses that can be found for yucca. Fiber from the narrow-leafed yucca is used for sewing or for ceremonial purposes such as by Navajo people in making hoops, prayer sticks and chant arrows. The juice from the plant is also used to make paint for ceremonial pipes. The leaves, root, and flower of this handy plant are all edible if prepared correctly, and it's said by some Navajo folks that if you wash your hair with a shampoo made of yucca, then your hair will grow long and shiny.
Giving Tree Gardens in the Co-op news!!!!!
Mile High Gardens!
Wherever I travel I visit gardens. I’ve visited fancy Parisian topiary gardens, I drank coconut milk fresh from the machete sliced hull in tropical Jamaican gardens, I’ve admired the proud overflowing window boxes of cottages in the German alps, and I’ve wondered at the selections found in Costa Rican garden stores. It seems everywhere I go I can connect with the space and the people easily through my love of gardens and plants. In many of the gardens that I’ve visited I’ve found gardeners hard at work planting, preparing the soil, or maintaining their precious little piece of earth. Gardeners seem to be an easy lot to connect with in general, and when I’m visiting with gardeners in places new to me, I just love asking folks about the local methods, climate, seasons, soils and plant selections. This month I had an opportunity to connect with gardeners in mile high, Denver Colorado as I visited the city and explored the famous Denver Botanic Gardens.
Lucky for myself, and anyone else Denver bound, the locals are a friendly and helpful lot. I found plenty of gardeners to chat with throughout Denver and enjoyed myself thoroughly walking through the amazing garden displays at the Denver Botanic Gardens, and visiting with the gardeners who shape them.
When talking with gardeners from other areas I’m always looking out for the similarities and differences between my gardens at home, and those that I’m learning about. The range of possibilities seems to expand when I learn what folks in different parts of the world are up to. Below is a little of what I learned while visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens.
The yucca in the water wise planting above are fireworks for the garden. Below are black eyed susan and plume poppy looking just as happy here in Colorado, as they do in Minnesota gardens.
The splashing water in this fountain garden stands out in the dry, high altitude climate of Denver just as does the painting below by the artist Mac. Click here to view a video of Mac explaining the making of this enchanting painting.
Entering this Cloud Forest room at the Denver Botanic Garden Conservatory made me feel like a gardener in the mist. I had a hard time leaving this cool moist room to walk back out into the hot dry Denver air.
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