Meet the Garden Squad—Connie Rayor

Meet the Garden Squad is a way to get better acquainted with some of our CSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers.

Meet Connie Rayor

Connie Rayor is a CSU-Denver Master Gardener Emeritus who still volunteers for the Habitat for Humanity outreach program. (photo provided by Connie Rayor)

Connie Rayor thinks she’s been a CSU-Denver Master Gardener for 26 years, but who’s counting when you’re having so much fun?

Fun seems to be Connie’s watchword when it comes to being a Master Gardener. She’s been involved in just about every outreach project since she began volunteering years ago. In fact, some of the programs weren’t on the Master Gardener radar until Connie got involved.

“Oh, the early days were great,” she said.

Xeriscape may be a well-established method of landscaping now, but in the 1980s it was a new idea. Tasked with finding what xeriscaping was all about, she thoroughly researched the process so it could be put into practice as part of the Master Gardener program.

Connie was also instrumental in setting up the first Master Gardener information booth at the Cherry Creek Farmers Market.

“We had lots of customers coming up to talk to us and they were delighted to see us there. We didn’t have all the materials they do now, but we did have some materials. That was a fun gig, let me tell you.”

Another enjoyable project was being on the Garden Line 9 television show in the early years, she said. The Master Gardeners group would go in on Saturday mornings and be on camera as people called in with their gardening questions.

She said it was “great fun” to field questions on the fly. “We wouldn’t know what they were going to ask.”

But of all the projects she’s been involved in, starting the Habitat for Humanity outreach program is the one that’s closest to her heart. Early on she had taken a tour of some of the homes in the Habitat program and was surprised to see such pitiful landscaping.

“There were these miserable little junipers there, and I asked about the plants. It wasn’t anything I did with thought, I just asked if they’d like some help with them.”

During the first several years, Master Gardeners supervised on planting days, helping direct how to properly place and space plants in the landscape. But now Master Gardener volunteers teach landscape maintenance classes to new Habitat for Humanity homeowners. Connie developed the original landscape maintenance manual that’s been updated over the years.

At a time when she could kick back and relax as a Master Gardener Emeritus, Connie’s still involved in teaching the landscape maintenance classes about three times a year. Together with Master Gardener volunteers Marti Holmes and Beth McCoy, the team teaches how to care for trees, plants, lawns and how to deal with insect pests among other topics.

“It’s been glorious working together with them,” Connie said. “It’s really been the highlight of  being a Master Gardener. It’s my very favorite long-term project because it provides a real service.”

Connie recommends that Master Gardener apprentices get involved in a project or task they’re really interested in, instead of just putting in their hours. “It will make you a better Master Gardener and create a lot of satisfaction,” she said.

Connie’s love of gardening started as a kid helping her mom in the vegetable garden at their west Denver home. Her lifelong love affair with gardening really took off after she retired as a Denver Public Schools teacher.

After retiring, she followed her husband Harold into the Master Gardener program, but then he dropped out. He had retired earlier and joined because he knew how much she liked to garden.

While she’s unable to do much gardening these days, two of her three daughters and her grandson, Daniel, still carry on the tradition.

“He lives in Boston and was showing off the seedlings he planted in the community garden,” Connie said. “He’s taken a Master Urban Gardener class, but he still calls me for gardening advice.”

By Jodi Torpey
Master Gardener volunteer since 2005

Meet the Garden Squad’s Kim Douglas

Meet the Garden Squad is a way to get better acquainted with some of our CSU Extension Master Gardener volunteers.

Meet Kim Douglas

Denver Master Gardener Kim Douglas enjoys a day in Crested Butte.

If anyone is cut out to be a Denver Master Gardener, it’s Kim Douglas. She’s as passionate about learning as she is about sharing what she’s learned.

This comes naturally to Kim, a retired English as a Second Language teacher and a current Library Program Associate on staff at Denver Public Library.

Her part-time work at the library includes programming that ranges from helping people learn how to use their smartphones and tablets to hands-on work with sewing and embroidery.

“I’m on my third chapter,” she said. “I’m excited about getting and giving training.”

One of the library programs she’s involved with is called Plaza. This special program is designed to meet the needs of immigrant, refugee, and asylee populations. Kim helps participants learn and practice English, prepares them to take their citizenship test, and lends a hand to children with arts and crafts projects.

“It’s very rewarding and a wonderful experience to help people in a way where they really need help,” she said.

Kim became a Master Gardener apprentice in 2018, something she always wanted to do and the first thing she did when she retired from teaching.

Fourth of July fireworks in Kim’s garden.

Part of the attraction was gaining a sense of accomplishment by taking her gardening hobby to the next level.

“I knew I’d get a lot of information about gardening and get a good grasp of the science behind gardening in Colorado, even though I had been doing it for years,” she explained.

One of her big “aha” moments was when she learned about soil compaction and how important it is to not work in wet soil, something she used to do on weekends when she was working fulltime.

Kim’s advice to Master Gardener apprentices is to take advantage of all the information and experience within the organization. “Be active, be involved, go to meetings and special events, get to know people.”

She’s taken her own advice to heart. At last season’s DMG plant sale she designed a better system to standardize the plant signage. From her experience the previous year, she realized signs could be more descriptive to help customers find exactly what they wanted.

‘Queen of the Night’ tulips add stunning color to Kim’s garden.

Kim said she also enjoys volunteering at the Master Gardener booth at the Farmers Market and helping with the Plant Select plants at the Denver Botanic Gardens annual plant sale.

“It’s fun, interesting and I develop a relationship with those plants,” she said. “I guess it’s just lust—plant lust—that makes me say, ‘I must have that plant’ like the ruby muhly ornamental grass I saw there.”

Her garden is filled to the brim with those love-at-first-sight plants. Part of the front yard is xeriscaped with native and low-water plants displayed in a big swath.

“In my garden I strive for an explosion of colors like gems and fireworks.” One of her favorite displays is a combination of plants that is in full flower around the Fourth of July.

It includes dark red daylilies planted with white Shasta daisies and highlighted with sea holly (Eryngium). She said the “funky, spiky” sea holly plants produce striking purple-blue flowers that look like small glowing thistles.

It’ easy to see why’Black Nigra’ hollyhocks attract attention.

When it comes to the gem colors, she selects plants that have such rich and vibrant flowers that passersby have to slow down or stop to appreciate them.

Some of the show-stopper plants include ‘Dark Magician Girl’ daylilies, ‘Ebony Dream’ iris, ‘Black Nigra’ hollyhocks, and ‘Queen of the Night’ tulips.

In the backyard vegetable garden she plants tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, and tomatillos – “everything to make a nice salsa” – plus eggplants and potatoes.

Kim said she’ll be combining her passions for teaching and gardening this season. She’s on the schedule to present programs on propagating plants and raised bed gardening at several library branches this spring.

Images provides by Kim Douglas

Text by Jodi Torpey
Master Gardener volunteer since 2005

A Denverite Visits New Orleans in July, Leaves in Awe That Anything Grows in Colorado, Like, Ever.

Image by McKenna Hynes

I recently returned from a little summer vaca in the South. New Orleans in July (a questionably timed vacation, albeit) is showy and fragrant; the ferns suckle lovingly to any crack and crevice providing green brush-strokes and blots everywhere, palms fill beds and pots alike, all of my houseplants are thriving in the wide open, the sun is scorching, and as our pilot reminded us as we prepared to de-plane, its humid enough to confuse a frog. I was constantly amazed at how effortlessly everything seemed to grow.

While in New Orleans, I was frequently amused by how the rest of the country (mis)understands Colorado living conditions. For the most part, folks think we spend most of the year dreaming of gardens as we stare out our frosty windows waiting for the snow to melt, visiting floral places abroad, and wearing multiple layers of socks at all times. Soooo… basically gardening at 10,000+ feet? While these perceptions are laughable, I started thinking that even though we don’t live in perpetual wintry wonder, the challenges we face to make anything grow aren’t necessarily less surmountable than our fam in the lofty-actual-mountains.

We were welcomed back to Denver with a remarkable storm featuring lightning, torrential rains, booming thunder… and hail. Of course, the very next day was smokin’ hot with nary a whisper of the siege.  Maintaining a vibrant garden in the Front Range is an extreme sport with our baffling daily fluctuations; the entire notion of keeping anything alive here seems impossible at times, but we’ve gotten pretty good at strategizing. Here are a few resources I’ve tracked down this year to help us all maintain beauty, build our skills, and be stewards to our land and community.

Image by McKenna Hynes

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Resource Central is a nonprofit organization based in Boulder that helps communities conserve resources and build sustainability efforts simply and cost-effectively. Their water-saving initiatives include native plant sales with simple designs for home gardens and often include low water perennials. They also have a tool library in Boulder where you can borrow for a couple of bucks per day so you don’t just buy the tamper, hedge trimmer, turf roller, or post hole diggers you need so infrequently. 

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The cities of Boulder, Lafayette, and Louisville partnered with Resource Central to give customers a Garden In A Box for turf-removal. Their Grass to Garden initiative is available to all communities with tips and resources to convert high water-consuming turf to low water garden areas. For the North Metro area, they have resources for assistance removing and disposing of turf, landscape architect recommendations, and more.

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Denver Water coined one of our most successful water-wise strategies with xeriscaping. And to keep sharing the good water word, Denver Water also partnered with local landscape architects to provide us mere civilians with some FREE! FREE! FREE! creativity. For those of us who are new (it’s me) who struggle with vision (all me), and are easily overwhelmed by the thought of starting fresh with a blank canvas (still, totally, all me), they’ve curated a bunch of plans for a variety of situations. They have plans for sloped xeriscaping, budget-friendly xeriscaping, narrow bed xeriscaping, year-round beauty designs, and many more. July is also Smart Irrigation Month! Head to Denver Water for tips on maintaining irrigation systems, watering rules, and efficiency strategies.

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And for the grand finale top-notch gardening game-changer, check out Plant Select for all your future dreaming. Plant Select is a nonprofit partnership between Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens, and professional horticulturists to identify smart plant choices for the Rocky Mountian Region. Their mobile-friendly site has a tool to help you find plants that will suit the conditions you’re facing. I tend to challenge the tool to see how obscure or specific I can get, and it always provides me with something unique and gorgeous. Plant Select: taking “right plant right place” to an accessible and fun platform. Say So Long! to the multiple Google tabs researching the same plant with contradicting information on each site; Goodbye! Big Box Store swindlers promising “You REALLY can’t kill this one!” and go get yourself some good, wholesome, ACCURATE information quickly and easily from Plant Select. They also feature some garden designs and ideas.

Image source

By McKenna Hynes

Apprentice Colorado Master Gardener since January 2019

Reimagining a Denver Hell Strip

 

A typical hell strip in “Any Town USA”

The hell strip (more politely called a tree lawn) is that pesky rectangular area between the street and the sidewalk. It’s a challenging spot – surrounded by concrete surfaces which make it super hot in the summer and subject to harsh elements in the winter.  Apprentice Denver County Master Gardeners (CMG’s) Elizabeth and Daniel Neufeld challenged themselves to redesign their hell strip by working with, not against the conditions at hand. Their new strip garden incorporates xeric native plants in a creative design which complements their early 1900’s Mayfair bungalow. Here’s a step-by-step description of the project in Elizabeth’s own words.

Site Description and Preparation
The 8.5’ by 16’ site had been a weedy portion of our hell strip. This section of our lawn was never irrigated and though we used a manual sprinkler on it for years, it never really thrived. Weeds from an adjacent bed also crept in and began to take over our lawn.

In June 2017 – after talking to CMG’s at East High’s Farmers Market – we put down 5 mil black plastic over the entire area to solarize the soil and kill the weeds. In March of this year, we removed the plastic and started to work on the soil.

The top several inches of soil was relatively good. Below that, though, was hard packed clay. Based upon our classwork to become CMG’s, and discussions with other CMG’s, we knew that we wanted to create a Native, drought resistant, garden. In order to have the appropriate depth of 2”-3” of pea gravel on top, we needed to dig out the clay. MUCH harder than we anticipated.

First I took every trash can we owned (about 5), and another 3 from a neighbor, and filled them up with just the first 4-5 inches of the topsoil. Then what to do with the clay below?  You can’t put it into the regular trash bins, nor into the city’s green compost bins as  they do not accept soil, primarily because of its weight. I secretly thought I could add just small amounts of dirt weekly and they wouldn’t know the difference. Yet this wasn’t right, and would take forever. We went online and called several places about renting a dumpster, yet the smallest dumpster we could find was going to cost $500, and we’d need to get a permit from the city to place it on the street. We needed another plan.

Perhaps you’ve seen smaller, heavy plastic canvas bags in people’s front yards as they do small remodeling jobs on their homes. These “bagsters” can be bought at a big-box store, and they hold up to 3300 pounds. Once filled, Waste Management will come and collect them for a fee. So we purchased one of these, set it up on our sidewalk next to the hell strip, and completely filled it with about 4” of the clay subsoil. It was truly a Herculean task, and it weighed over a ton, literally.

After the Waste Management dump truck removed the bagster and all its contents, we then put back all of the topsoil we had previously removed. Another day of heavy lifting.

Plant Selection
What to choose, what to choose?! Thank goodness for the CSU Extension fact sheets on Xeriscaping, Low Water gardening, and Native Plants. We also had Pretty Tough Plants, a book by the experts at Plant Select. We  spent a fair amount of time at the Jefferson County Extension office xeric garden, and the Denver Botanic Gardens, and took pictures of plants we liked. We spent a huge amount of time debating which and how many plants to include. The mix and quantities of plants we decided on follow. Click images for plant names.

Berlandia lyrate “Chocolate flower”

Agastache “Sonoran” hyssop

Agastache “Coronado” hyssop

Delosperma “Firespinner”

Eriogonum umbellatum “Kannah Creek” buckwheat

Schizachyrium scoparian “Little Bluestem”

Tannacetum densum “Partridge Feather”

Prunnus bessyi “Pawnee Buttes” Sand Cherry

• Berlandia lyrate,“Chocolate Flower” (4)
• Agastache, “Sonoran” (2) and “Coronado” hyssop (1)
• Delosperma, “Firespinner” and “Red Mountain Flame” iceplants (4)
• Eriogonum umbellatum, “Kannah Creek” buckwheat (2)
• Schizachyrium scoparian, “Little Bluestem” (3)
• Tanacetum densum, “Partridge Feather”  (3)
• Prunus bessyi, “Pawnee Buttes” Sand Cherry (3)
• Amorpha fructosa, False Indigo Lead Plant (1)  not shown
• Miscanthus sinesis  (1) not shown

Design

In talking with a fellow CMG apprentice, Brenda Reum – who has her own landscape firm – we decided to put a false arroyo diagonally through the rectangular site. We also wanted a few larger accent rocks, and some medium size rock around the edges. We went to a local sand and gravel company and selected some larger rocks, and got several 5-gallon buckets of mid-size rock. During this time period (late April/early May), we also went camping in Western Colorado for a week. While driving on a dirt road along the Delores River, we came upon a pile of rocks – and collected a few dozen we liked and brought them home!

After creating an outline of the arrangement of the arroyo and the planting on paper, we commenced planting. Like many a good idea, the execution was more time-consuming than anticipated.

Once the planting was complete, we used an online calculator to estimate the amount of pea gravel needed. To have 3” of pea gravel on the site as large as ours, we would need 1 ton of rock. We put a large tarp on the street adjacent to the garden and the delivery truck dumped it on top. We spent hours shoveling the gravel over the dirt, then carefully placed our ‘trophy’ rocks through the arroyo and around the edges. Some clusters of rock are near some of the plants, and we placed a piece of weathered cedar (also found during the camping trip) and a piece of ‘rust art’ in the bed.

Now
The bed has been in for about 6 weeks, and it’s looking great and seems to be happy. We initially watered the plants every 2-3 days for the first 3 weeks, and have now cut back to once weekly. The ice plants and partridge feather are already spreading out, the chocolate flower and hyssop have been blooming. The little bluestem has yet to fully take off, but those plants were the smallest of all when we purchased them. We left plenty of space for the eventual growth and spreading of these plants, and look forward to their ultimate size and height.

Time and Cost of Materials
It is hard to calculate the total amount of time we spent — yet it was easily 3 times more than we thought it was going to be. It was approximately 100 – 150 hours of our own labor.

We found the plants at several independent garden centers as the big box centers did not have any of these. And because of this, the cost was more than we had anticipated, too. We spent approximately $400-$450 on 23 plants.

We spent $30 on purchasing the ‘bagster’, and $120 to have it carted away. We spent $85 on the pea gravel (including delivery), and another $40 on the larger rocks we purchased. All totaled, we spent $675-$725 on the new Native garden.  We are so pleased with the results and hope to expand our collection of native plants in other parts of our garden.

Thank you, Elizabeth, for sharing your experience! If you have a question or comment for Elizabeth, she’ll respond in the comment section.

Photo Credits: Plants: Plant Select.org,  Street Image: Bing Free Images, Garden diagram and completed garden: Elizabeth Neufeld

Posted by Elizabeth Neufeld and Linda McDonnell

 

 

Pretty Tough Plants Book Review

I love the name of the new book by the experts at Plant Select. Pretty Tough Plants describes the family of Plant Select plants perfectly.

If you’ve grown any of these beautiful plants that are so well-suited to our gardens, then you know what I mean. If you haven’t grown any Plant Select recommendations, what’s stopping you? These are the plants that can help you be a more successful gardener.

Plant Select calls itself “a nonprofit collaboration of Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens, and professional horticulturists.” I call it one of the best plant testing and introduction programs in the country.

Pretty Tough Plants: 135 Resilient, Water-Smart Choices for a Beautiful Garden (Timber Press, 2017) is a follow-up to Durable Plants for the Garden: A Plant Select Guide published in 2009.

This new edition seems to be more user friendly, both by its manageable size and in the plant presentations. Plants are divided into groups that include tender perennials and annuals, petites, groundcovers, perennials, grasses, vines, shrubs, and trees and conifers.

Each Plant Select description includes its scientific name, common name, mature size, flower type, bloom time, and best features. Understandable icons give details on sun and water requirements, as well as if the plant attracts pollinators or if deer resist browsing it.

The “Landscape Use” information is meant for gardeners who have difficulty matching plants to place or are unsure of how to combine plants for the most striking effect. The descriptions make suggestions for perfect placement and the best Plant Select companions.

Many of the gorgeous, full-color images show both a close-up view of the plant and a shot of how it looks in the landscape when in full bloom. One of my favorites is Redleaf rose (Rosa glauca) shown as a fabulous specimen plant, and closeups of the star-like single pink flowers and brilliant red hips.

An especially nice feature for this volume is the Plant Reference Guide in the back of the book. This guide provides a quick resource for matching the right Plant Select plant to the right spot in the landscape.

Besides the typical categories, there are two additional and interesting categories: Special landscape use and North American roots. Not every plant has a special landscape use, but when a plant is recommended for “dry shade, cold hardy,” like Denver Gold columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha), gardeners can trust the endorsement.

Prairie Jewel penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus) is one Pretty Tough Plant in my xeriscape.

I’ve grown many different Plant Select recommendations in my perennial beds, and I can vouch for their resilience – one of the seven qualities a plant has to have to be added to the program.

In addition to being able to stand up to a challenging climate, Plant Select plants have to thrive in a variety of conditions, be water smart, have that “it” factor, resist insect pests and plant diseases, offer long-lasting beauty, and aren’t invasive.

I can tell Pretty Tough Plants was a labor of love by a group of passionate plant people. The photo credits read like a list of area Who’s Who, from well-known horticulturists to CSU Extension Master Gardeners. Pat Hayward and David Winger had the happy task of sorting and selecting images, including many of their own.

By Jodi Torpey
A Denver Master Gardener
(Timber Press provided a complimentary copy of Pretty Tough Plants for this review.)

Is Your Xeriscape Ready for the Spotlight?

If you think your water wise garden is ready for its close up, the Denver Botanic Gardens would like to hear from you. The DBG is looking for showcase gardens to feature on its Bonfils Stanton Water Wise Landscape Tour this spring.

Denver metro area gardeners who’ve taken their landscape water conservation efforts to the next level are encouraged to apply to be a tour garden. Selected gardens demonstrate the key principles of a water-wise landscape design.

To be considered, your xeriscape should feature a yard with either less traditional lawn or lawn alternatives, include native flowers and shrubs, have plantings of other drought-tolerant plants, and use water-conserving irrigation systems. It should also be beautiful, too.

The selected landscapes need to be in peak shape on Saturday, June 17, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

If you have an anxiety attack at the thought of a few hundred people strolling through your backyard, this opportunity might not be for you. But if you’d like to help inspire others with your xeriscaping efforts, you might enjoy chatting with people throughout the day and answering questions about your experience, how the design saves water, how much maintenance is required, and the names of individual plants.

If you’re interested, apply sooner rather than later. “This is a rolling admission process so early submissions may improve the likelihood of selection,” says the DBG. For more information and to receive an application, send an email to Rachael Jaffe (rachael.jaffe@botanicgardens.org) or call 720-865-3613.

Getting Started with Xeriscaping

If your landscape isn’t tour-worthy – or you’ve been thinking about xeriscaping and don’t know where to start – now’s a good time start planning. Start by rethinking the ways you currently use water in your yard.

If that sounds overwhelming, start by transforming a small portion of your landscape. Small xeriscapes will still help conserve water. Look around your landscape and find the places where water use is the highest. Then find ways to reduce or limit irrigation, like seldom-used areas or parts of the yard that are highly maintained.

One of the best ways to save water in the landscape is by cutting back on turfgrass. How much irrigated lawn do you need and how much can be replaced with a lawn alternative? Just because you’ve always had a large lawn doesn’t mean you use it. Low-water grasses, ground covers, perennial flowers, and drought-tolerant shrubs can fill the space.

Another way to save is by rethinking ways to irrigate lawn areas separately from planting areas. Traditional systems can be replaced by low-pressure, low-angle sprinklers. In flower beds, use drip irrigation or soaker hoses under mulch.

Fill your xeriscape with colorful, climate-adapted plants that are known to grow well in our area, like the plants introduced through the Plant Select program. Group plants by their water needs, clustering together those that use less water in drier areas and those that need slightly more water in moister areas.

Mulch is also an important part of a xeriscape because it helps maintain soil moisture and reduce soil temperature. Depending on the plants you select, you may need rock, gravel, bark, wood chips or straw. Some xeric plants do better with inorganic mulches that let fast-falling rains percolate down to plant roots while reducing runoff.

CSU Extension has many excellent (and free) resources for getting started with xeriscaping. This fact sheet on transforming a conventional landscape to a xeriscape may lead to having your yard be part of a water wise garden tour in the future.

By Jodi Torpey
A Denver Master Gardener

It’s Winter and, Yet, I Dream of Cactuses

It’s January.  As I write, it’s cold.  It’s snowing.  The garden is frozen solid.  There isn’t much that can be done out in the garden.  But indoors, we can do a lot of thinking about and planning for about our gardens.  For me, this also includes thinking back to what has already been achieved. My special joy has been planning, making and planting my “desert garden”.

Prickly pear peeks out of the snow

Having gained my gardening skills and horticultural knowledge in the temperate south of England, I was excited on moving to Colorado to try my hand at growing these interesting, drought tolerant plants.  Cactuses in England are generally small prickly jobs which sulk year-round in dry pots on the windowsill, gathering cobwebs.  I knew virtually nothing about them when I came to live in the USA.  My husband wasn’t much better; he told me he knew his cactuses had been over-watered when he saw mushrooms growing in their pots!

Call it what you will – rock garden, trough garden, crevice garden, desert garden. From big deserts to tiny tufa troughs, cactuses and succulents can be grown and enjoyed in many situations.  I know it’s the middle of winter right now, but I’m thinking of the sunny joy of seeing the Community Heroes Crevice Garden in Arvada and the new steppe gardens at Denver Botanic Gardens in the summer of 2016.  These showed me what could be achieved.  And as I gaze at the tips of Opuntia (prickly pear and cholla) plants poking through the snow in my front yard today, I am in awe at the extremes these amazing plants can tolerate.

Opuntia x pinkavae

 

 

Our front yard faces north, not auspicious for cactus growing, but safely out of bounds to the dog and small grandchildren, and raised up above the sidewalk, so safely out of reach of passers-by.  The area I designated to be the “desert garden” is about 20 x 10 feet, bisected by the path from the sidewalk to the front door.  Despite its northerly aspect, this area does get a lot of sunshine from spring to fall.  A minimum of six to eight hours of direct sunlight daily is recommended for cactuses.  When we moved in, this part of the garden was just a boring flat patch of clay soil with rather elderly wood mulch strewn over it.  Again, not exactly the well-drained, lean (in terms of nutrients) soil usually associated with cactuses.  But I like a challenge!

To get things started, I raked off the wood mulch and underlying landscape fabric to reveal a flat, compacted, grey soil surface covered in the wriggling, white stems of bindweed like ghostly spaghetti.  I pulled as much of the bindweed as possible. Then to create some height and slopes I dug and shaped the soil into small hills sloping down towards the sidewalk.  We inherited hundreds of large granite boulders with the back yard, so my son and husband hauled a couple of dozen out to the front for me.  I chose the most attractive boulders and made sure they were of similar or complementary colors.  These were placed on the slopes, either singly as “specimen boulders” or in groups forming little “canyons” in which I could plant.

Rocks, soil, river rock and neighbor’s turf

The slopes help to ensure rain (when we get it) runs off quickly so the plants don’t sit in puddles.  Pockets of water are trapped by the boulders giving little damp areas against the boulders and allowing water to slowly trickle down into the soil below.  To improve the soil drainage further, I dug in a couple of trailers’ worth of “squeegee” to a depth of approx. six to eight inches.  This is the name around here (I gather) for crushed gravel.  It is pinkish in tone and halfway between pea gravel and sand in size. Areas of small river rock (obtained for free from a neighboring garden which was being “re-done” – I love a freebie!) were laid as a transition from the “desert” to the greener area of the yard and the sidewalk.  After planting, a thick layer of pure squeegee was used as a mulch over the whole area.  This has been very effective at keeping the bindweed at bay, helped by merciless hand pulling of any little shoots that do make it to the surface.

The choosing of plants followed considerable book research, web browsing and advice from local nurserymen.  I used a mix of cactuses, succulents, grasses, small drought-tolerant perennials and bulbs.  Naturally, none of these are hot-house types.  They are all cold hardy down to at least Zone 4.  For many of them their natural environment is arid mountain-sides in Arizona and New Mexico where they bake in the summer and freeze in the winter. A couple of dwarf pines provide year-round green and structure.  (I had to remind myself that these two needed regular watering, unlike the rest of the desert garden, as they are young trees, albeit small.)

Pinus mugo var. pumilio

Planting took place in June 2015, so these plants are now “enjoying” their second winter in our garden.  They spent two and a half months under snow in winter 2015/6 and came up smiling in spring 2016.  There were just two losses, both small Yuccas which had rotted at the crown.  Fortunately, I had extras safely potted up behind the house, so they were immediately replaced.

For the first summer, I watered maybe twice a week, using the mist spray on the hose head.  The second summer, 2016, I did not water at all.  The winter snow that laid on the area for two or three months or more, had provided a good reservoir of moisture which saw the garden right through the summer.

The immediate effect after planting was of a lot of very small plants stranded in a gravelly desert.  I believe in buying small and being patient for a year or two while the plants bulk up, seed around and acclimatise to their environment.

Just planted, June 2015

 

And, now, after another summer, they are starting to do so.  I see little “pups” on the Echinocereus.  There are Sedum and Stachys seedlings. The stars are the Opuntias (tree chollas and prickly pears) and the Delospermas.  These have grown quickly and the Delospermas were carpets of jewel-like flowers for months on end.  Dianthus and Artemisias are soft foils to their prickly companions. Groups of Nasella tennuissima provide a feathery backdrop and transition to greener and moister plantings at the rear.  The gentle movement of these grasses is a nice contrast to the static cactuses. The little species tulips ‘Persian Pearl’ popped up beautiful purple-red blooms with yellow centers in spring.  I hope to see more of these this coming spring.

Tulipa pulchella @Persian Pearl’

Delosperma ‘Fire Spinner’

 

Summer, 2016 (after the hail storm had knocked off all the flowers!)

 

Now it is getting established, it really doesn’t require a lot work.  No watering if we have enough snow in winter.  Minimal weeding.  A gentle blow-off of leaves and some careful extracting of same from the Opuntias’ prickles with the kitchen tongs once in the fall.  That’s it.

I love my desert garden and see passers-by enjoying it too and that just adds to the pleasure for me.

PS:  Cactus? Cacti? Cactuses?  Who knows … ?? Who cares … !!

Anne Hughes/a Denver County Master Gardener

https://communityheroesgarden.jimdo.com/

http://www.botanicgardens.org/

www.coloradocactus.org

Hardy Succulents: Tough Plants for Every Climate by Gwen Moore Kelaidis. Publisher: Storey Publishing.

Cacti and Succulents for Cold Climates by Leo J Chance. Publisher: Timber Press

Plant List

Cactuses

Echinocereus coccineus

Echinocereus triglochidiatus ‘White Sands’

Escobaria forcottei ‘Koenesii’

Agave utahensis var. kiahabensis

Tree cholla – Opuntia imbricata var. arborescens ‘White Tower’

Tree cholla – Opuntia arborescens var. viridifloa ‘Santa Fe’

Creeping cholla – Opuntia clavata

Prickly pear – Opuntia x pinkavae

Texas red yucca – Hesperaloe parviflora

Yucca flacida ‘Bright Edge’

Herbaceous perennials, bulbs and grass

Dusty miller/artemisia – Artemisia ‘Beth Chatto’ & Artemisia absinthium ‘Silver Frost’

Woolly thyme – Thymus pseudolanuginosus

Yarrow – Achillea sps. various

Sedum- Sedum spectabile various

Pinks- Dianthus sps. various + garden cuttings

Rock rose – Helianthemum sp.

Ice plants – Delosperma ‘Fire Spinner’ &  ?

Two row stonecrop – Sedum spurium ‘Tricolor’

Other stonecrops – ‘Vera Jameson’, ‘Lidakense’, ‘Angelina’

Mullein – Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Polar Summer’

Lambs ears – Stachys byzantinus

Feathergrass – Nassella tenuissima ‘Ponytails’

Species tulip – Tulipa pulchella ‘Persian Pearl’

Trees 

Dwarf mugo pine – Pinus mugo  var. pumilio

Dwarf mugo pine – Pinus mugo ‘Teeny’

Gardening Between the Rocks

Little Pickles Plant, Othonna capensis at CHCG

Have you ever marveled at a vigorous plant thriving in the narrow gap between two rocks? Or wrestled with a weed that stubbornly grows through the crack in a sidewalk?  The tenacity of plants to grow, and sometimes prefer, these tight settings is the premise behind crevice gardening, a form of rock gardening which is gaining in popularity.

To learn more about crevice gardens, a group of Denver County Master Gardeners recently toured the Community Heroes Crevice Garden (CHCG) located at the Apex Simms Street Recreation Center in Arvada. CHCG was designed and built by  Kenton Seth and his team in 2014-2015. It is one of the largest crevice gardens in the world, spanning over 1,000 square feet, built with 60 tons of Dakota sandstone from southern Colorado, 14 tons of sand and 20 tons of gravel.

Pulvinaris ruschia, mat shrubby iceplant in winter at CHCG

Crevice gardens mimic mountain terrain through the use of flat stones which are laid vertically and buried deeply to create narrow gaps. The entire rock structure is “engineered” for stability with the care that a seasoned mason builds a dry stacked retaining wall. The stones keep the plants cool during the hottest part of the day and create various microsystems depending on the garden’s orientation. The gaps are filled with a porous, sandy planting mixture which is layered to promote optimum drainage and deep root development.

Specimens are planted “bareroot”, meaning the original potting medium is removed prior to planting. Roots are then gingerly tucked in the crevices. Once plants are established, CHCG is watered  by overhead irrigation every two weeks or less.  Crevice gardens generally showcase xeric plants, such as delosperma, hens and chicks, species tulips and manzanita, to name a few.  Trees and tall plants which would shade the garden are discouraged. The majority of plants at CHCG are from the dry, cold grasslands of the Steppe regions. A complete list of the plants used  at CHCG and directions for starting a crevice garden can be found here.

Initial Planting of Community Heroes Crevice Garden

CHCG is a young, ambitious public garden. It’s very much a living laboratory (but then, aren’t all gardens?). It will be interesting to visit it periodically to see its development and seasonal changes. We are fortunate to have several established crevice gardens in Colorado including at the Denver Botanic Gardens (within the Alpine, Mordecai and Steppe gardens) and Vail’s Betty Ford Alpine Gardens (home of the International Alpine Crevice Garden).

If you are interested in trying crevice gardening, Kenton offered that growing plants between a few vertical, closely set rocks in the ground or in a stone trough is an easy and fun way to get started!

Photos courtesy of Kenton Seth

Written by Linda McDonnell, a Denver County Master Gardener.

 

 

 

 

Is a new tree on your wish list?

Not all gardeners enjoy reading seed catalogs.  If you are more interested in planning for a new tree then here are a few resources to get you started.

• You can order the book Dependable Landscape Trees from the CSU-Extension store.
• If you are not sure whether you want an evergreen tree, maybe a large deciduous tree or a small ornamental tree the Colorado State University Extension Fact Sheets have a lot of information.
• Colorado’s Plant Select program has 5 trees.  Use the “Find A Plant” search tool and enter Tree in “Plant Type”. 
• The Plant Select website  also has a short video on why certain trees and shrubs are good choices for Colorado.
• The City and County of Denver, Parks and Recreation division, Forestry and Natural Resources department is a great resource for information about both public and private trees in Denver.
• You might also be interested in the Denver Digs Trees program from “The Park People”.  “Over the past 30 years, our Denver Digs Trees program has provided more than 48,000 affordable and free trees to Denver residents, helping to enhance quality of life in our city.”   The application form for 2016 will be available in early January.

Five Favorite Bulletproof Plants for Denver Gardening

Just about every gardener I know lost a favorite plant or two over the winter. Most of my hardy roses died to the ground, but eventually returned.  Sadly, the tall and lovely redleaf rose (Rosa rubifolia) is gone for good. Whether a rose, shrub or fruit tree, losing a prized plant is like losing an old garden pal.

The only way to get over the loss is to replant with something that will survive the challenges of living in our climate. Here are five bulletproof plants that seem to thrive in spite of the vagaries of weather:

Kintzley’s Ghost honeysuckle (Lonicera reticulata ‘Kintzley’s Ghost’)

If you’re looking for a dependable woody plant, Kintzley’s Ghost honeysuckle is it. I planted this Plant Select recommendation years ago and it continues to surprise me every year. The vine does well with only the precipitation it receives. When there’s wet weather through the winter and spring, it grows a bit taller with more foliage. During drier years it still shows up and looks good. In addition to its low-water, low-maintenance needs, I appreciate the eucalyptus-like foliage on vines that crawl up and over the picket fence.

Goldflame spirea (Spirea x bumalda ‘Goldflame’)

In 2001 I planted three of these tidy shrubs and they’re still going strong. Even after the shock of the sudden freeze last November, all three returned with only a few dead branches. A quick trim was all they needed. This spirea is a compact deciduous shrub that grows to about 3 feet tall and just as wide. Drought-tolerant once established, it can brighten any spot with crimson-red leaves in spring that turn to vibrant green by summer. Reddish-bronze fall color is an added bonus. Small pink flowers can bloom twice over the season if dead-headed.

Silver Fountain butterfly bush (Buddleia alternifolia)

This Plant Select winner is a beautiful shrub with graceful arching branches. In spring there are tons of light-purple flower clusters that attract butterflies like crazy. If you plant one, be sure to give it plenty of room because it can grow to more than 10 feet tall and wide. I’ve found the only downside is the long branches are surprisingly brittle during winter and some may break under heavy loads of snow — nature’s way of pruning so you don’t have to. This butterfly bush prefers well-drained soil and is adaptable to low-water conditions.

Moonshine yarrow (Achillea ‘Moonshine’)

Some gardeners think yarrow is the least sophisticated of the xeric plants, but I appreciate it because it loves my landscape. Its tall, shrub-like habit makes a nice backdrop in a xeriscape garden and the silvery-gray foliage and bright yellow flowers really shine in summer. I started with two plants but yarrow needs to be divided every few years, so I’ve transplanted more around the yard. I leave some flowers on the plant through winter, but I also clip some to use in dry table arrangements and crafts projects.

Brown-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba)

Brown-eyed Susan is smaller than its black-eyed cousin, and that’s fine with me. This biennial coneflower behaves more like a perennial because of its generous seed-sowing nature. My large collection started as two small starts and have spread throughout the garden on their own. The sunny yellow, daisy-like flowers have beautiful brown “eyes” and stand tall from mid-summer through fall. Bees and butterflies are attracted to the long-lasting blooms, but they make nice cutting flowers, too.

By Jodi Torpey
Denver Master Gardener