A glimpse into the future! Denver Botanic Gardens at Chatfield Farms

New Crevice garden at DBG Chatfield

Twice in the last few years my colleagues have built ambitious rock gardens without my input or knowledge. Were I another, I might be miffed, or feel perhaps slighted. After all, I've come off a 3 year stint as President of the North American Rock Garden society. You'd think they'd give me an inkling at least at what they were up to. Since both of these efforts have turned out to be pretty damn magnificent, I'm just going to stay mum and pretend I was really part of the team....Fiddlesticks! What greater honor is there on the planet when your young colleagues outdo you at your own game? Maybe they were waiting to surprise me? They succeeded quite well if that were the case!

Of course we live in the shadow of the "Rocky Mountains" and any botanic garden worth its salt will have rock work since many of the best wildflowers grow and look best alongside rocks. I would like to mete out some credit here--except I don't know who from the remarkable team of horticulturists at Chatfield (under the guidance of manager of Horticulture Jennifer Trunce) to credit. I know that Grace Johnson (who has managed many of the great gardens at Chatfield) is now overseeing this pretty massive garden. Ryan Keating, an inspired garden designer, helped bring the crevice garden to its present state. The two pictures above show the West (top) and East (bottom) wings of the garden--which extends a long ways in both directions.

One of innumerable gems that dot the garden. I have never seen this in cultivation before anywhere. I note only three records on I-Naturalist. I have never seen it on my half dozen or so visits to Lesotho.

Jamesbrittenia jurassica

Another plant in the same genus I have also not ever seen myself on my trips. It also has only three records on I-Naturalist.

This has been blooming for a very long time...and looks mighty good on 10-10-2025 (our traditional date for first frost, incidentally: fortunately none in sight!)

Jamesbrittenia breviflora

Now I HAVE seen this quite often in the Drakensberg, as have quite a few people on I-Naturalist. Obviously I will be monitoring how these do over the next few

The label says the name. I have me doots that this form will be even as hardy as my collection on the Witteberg spur of the Drakensberg...

Alongside the crevice garden the Labyrinth has filled in very nicely with a wide assortment of rock plants...had to go take a peek. You can catch a glimpse of what the Labyrinth (and crevice garden's back side) looked like if you click this link.

Epilobium (Zauschneria) cana (californica)

This is one name change I am going to resist! 

Alyssum stribrnyi

One of the finest dwarf alyssums loving this new garden.

I can't stop admiring that damn Jamesbrittenia lasutica!

Phygelius capensis

A very happy clump of the high altitude form of Phygelius--doubtless collected in Lesotho by Mike Bone (Associate director of horticulture at DBG) and his team on one of his seed collection trips to the Drakensberg in cooperation with Katse Botanic Gardens.

Delosperma congestum 'White Nugget' resisting binary classification.

Eriogonum allenii

If you do not know this plant, do not pass go. Do not collect $100--click on this LINK and learn more.

I was at Chatfield for a meeting--and naturally had to linger in the magnificent native gardens that embrace the Earl J. Sinnamon Center designed and planted over a decade ago by Lauren Springer and maintained by a series of extraordinarily talented horticlturists. I forgot to note the Latin name on that Helianthus. Sorry! I'll see if I can add it in the next few days--pretty stunning, no?

Aster season

A half dozen kinds of daisies are blazing away in this garden...

Linanthus nuttallii

One of my favorite Western perennials has bloomed reliably for years (and many months within those years)--the best display  have seen of this wonderful phlox relative. It has a new Latin name I have forgotten (or repressed). 

Here is what that same taxon looked like at York Street before my beloved Wildflower Treasures was turned into a Potager. I'm over it. Really. Just ask my therapist.

The Gardens and Conservation committee toured some of the amazing acreage the Chatfield staff are transforming from hideous monoculture of Bromus inermis (Smooth brome--a horrendous Eurasian grass that has been deliberately sown over millions of acres of the West--utterly destroying the native vegetation in the process. Incredibly, it's still being sold and sown). Here is a well established stand of tall grass prairie next to the Wedding gazebo.

I believe this was sown this year. The Research Dept. is managing this process--I have been stunned how there were virtually no weeds whatsoever in any of these beds--and I looked.

I had to chuckle seeing the masses of Coreopsis tinctoria--a plant that's pretty local (if widespread) in Colorado. For the heck of it, I looked it up on BONAP and poor old Nevada seems to be the only state in the Continental U.S. where this doesn't grow natively...boo hoo! There's probably more in these meadows than in all the wild in Colorado! Such is the power of horticulture.

The Gaillardias were none too shabby for nearly mid-October! Incredibly variable in color...

This is one I'd like to save seed on...

Oh yes. Pumpkins!

Oh yes! Between today and Sunday afternoon 30,000 or more people will be coming to Chatfield farms to pick out pumpkins from the vast pumpkin fields. It's not too late to join them tomorrow or Sunday!

P.S. I have not done a proper, statistical analysis--but I suspect that if the respective attendance numbers of Chatfield Farms and D.B.G. York street were to be platted, there would be a year not too far hence when the former may eclipse the latter (provided we continue with the inspired leadership we've been blessed with most of my tenure). I would not be surprised if I were alive to see that year. (Just between you and me, I'm quite sure I will have retired well before that however!). Shall we take bets?

Hey! Y'all come visit me in TEXAS!

 

The great state of Texas--altitudinally

If you HAPPEN to be in or near Dallas in the next week you have TWO opportunities to hear me speak Sunday I'll be talking about how important Texas plants are in gardens across America (Click here to find out details: Treasures from the South)

Next Tuesday I speak to the North Texas Cactus and Succulent society at 852o8 Garland Rd. Dallas, TX 75218 on Superbloom in Namaqualand!

Hope to see you at one (or BOTH) events...

I Swear ta ya! One heck of a genus!

 

Swertia bimaculata

There weren't as many flowers blooming in September in Central China--we were in forest where trees and shrubs reigned supreme. Don't get me wrong--we saw dozens, probably hundreds of plants in bloom--but nothing to compare with Yunnan or Tibet in June and July a few years ago. One genus that delighted me, one with which I've had a bit of a destiny (as you will see) was Swertia.

I got a twofer with this shot: what a strange beetle that was! I wonder if it's a common pollinator. I love the lurid, dotted flower on this species--which we saw again and again on several mountain ranges in Central China. I would love to grow it!

The plants can grow almost a meter tall-- I didn't look carefully to see if it was perennial or monocarpic.

Swertia sp. ign. at Shennongjia National Park

Here is yet anotber Swertia--an undetermined species...there are a lot of these in China!

Lomatogonium bellum

Okay, I admit it's not QUITE Swertia--but close. I have often found Swertia perennis in the vicinity of Lomatogonium rotatum in Colorado--More on that later perhaps...they share a resemblance (not to mention overlapping much of their mutual range). This occurred at the highest point of our sojourn at Shennongjia National Park--a fantastic day of our great trip. And this taxon has a more than passing resemblance to yet another Gentianaceous cousin, Gentianella cerastioides.

They are not always so petite!

 Early in my career curating the Rock Alpine Garden at Denver Botanic gardens we grew Swertia kingii from an Index Seminum: it was magnificent! It was also monocarpic. Of course we've also grown Frasera--which now has been segregated into another genus. I don't agree with this...but let's not dip our toes in THAT taxonomic cauldron! By the way, there are only FOUR records of this Swertia on I-Naturalist (one of them being mine). Each is vast distances from the next--it is obvious that China is ridiculously underrepresented on that App. Compare it to the countless records for Gentianella cerastoides in Ecuador. 

Swertia banzragczii

While exploring Swertia, I found this image I took in the Altai Mountains of Kazakhstan fifteen years ago--a flower almost as peculiar as the spelling of its Scientific name!

Swertia perennis

I have photographed this many times, but unfortunately that was in the pre-digital era. I'm hoping Al Schneider won't object if I share share his image*. This is of course the commonest member of the genus, growing over a vast swath of Eurasia and North America.

It's well worth spending a few minutes scrolling through I-Naturalist and seeing what an amazing and varied group this is--even WITHOUT Frasera.  I Swear ta ya!

*Here's Al's website: Southwest Colorado Wildflowers

You can't go home again: a tale of woe.

I probably have pictures of what it looked like originally: a typical east Denver bungalow with tattered lawn and two upright junipers flanking the house {"Surely you won't remove THOSE?" said our incredulous realtor, Susan. "In a New York minute" replied my Ex). Putting in the "xeriscape" was a big deal: we got to know every neighbor--all of them wits. "Are you burying your mother-in-law?" quipped one. "Putting in a swimming pool?" asked another. The garden was featured in books, magazines, newspaper and toured again and again. It was our little masterpiece.

For a while we had wonderful displays of tulips and other bulbs

But it was the incredible NO WATER mats of groundcovers--some native, some exotic--that blazed throughout the year. I don't recall ever watering this garden.

This picture was taken when the garden was at it's apogee--maybe 20 years ago. It looked pretty much the same up until...we'll get to that...Notice the big red patch just left of center?

Here is a picture of that paintbrush when it was young...

I cannot tell a lie: this is NOT the same paintbrush (this is C. integra) but the C. liniariifolia that I grew there lasted almost twenty years, bloomed for months and was this dazzling. Believe me...

One of the ultimate glories of that garden was (and I use the verb advisedly) the spikethrifts. I grew a half dozen species--A. glumaceum (shown here), A. hohenakeri, A. venustum, and on and on. Theh all just got bigger and better every year. I harvested thousands of seeds off them for exchanges--because it wasn't watered, the seed developed better: I had high viability.

Here two species contrast nicely...

I believe this was the first Salvia pachyphylla planted in the Rocky Mountain region--in the early 1990's. It was never watered and was still there...till recently.

Take well over 30 years ago--that's my daughter Eleni and Zauschneria arizonica (now Epilobium something or other if you want to be correct. I don't). In late summer the garden looked like an abattoir (in a GOOD way)--masses of several species of Zauschneria (Epilobium for you sticklers) that contrasted ever so subtley in shade of red. I have a very funny story to tell about that. It reflects very poorly on an eminent "horticulturist" from Georgia--I may be giving away too much. I have had relatively few unpleasant experiences with my professional colleagues--but the two "giants" of Athens (GA) both made a bad impression on me. Perhaps, if and when they die (assuming they die before me), I'll tell some tales...but I digress. Somehow unpleasant memories keep coming back.

My pride and joy--the San Rafael selection of E. corymbosum that turned deep pink as it aged. It was still there a few months ago, btw. This garden was a showcase of buckwheats (Eriogonum) second to none.

At the time, there were probably not more than a handful of unwatered (but intentional gardens--not abandoned yards) in the Front Range. NONE could compare with this one for beauty and diversity. NONE. If I sound conceited, I'm not. I'm just honest. Conceit was knocked out of me years ago. Besides this garden wasn't all mine: it was really Gwen's brainchild. She's a heck of a gardener. But I did take it over...

Eriogonum niveum persisted for only a few decades...but what a show it put on--for months. It turned a russet fawn as it aged--I never photographed that alas.

Eriogonum ovalifolium has always been a favorite of mine--we grew countless accessions and color forms.

A half dozen species of buckwheats are in this picture taken over 30 years ago...many likely grown in cultivation for the very first time here...and of course many physarias and lesquerellas. I still believe in the latter genus, btw. Such a fuddy duddy!

Eriogonum pauciflorum var. nebraskense bloomed non-stop from June to frost along the driveway.

Let's not even dare look at the back yard. It was our play pen where we grew thousands of treasures. Avert your face, quickly...I just got a pang of regret.

I confess--there were times it was less attractive in certain lights. The "dwarf" blue spruce got out of scale, and what possessed us to plant that pine? I do miss the giant Mahonia fremontii next to it. We moved out in 1993 and rented it out for almost 15 years. Three or four sets of renters moved through including three of the most beautiful women I have ever known. One was a niece by marriage (now a professor and mother and our best renter ever). I take that back, the doctor who moved in afterwards with his gracious wife who'd bake cookies if I was coming over to garden and wanted so to buy the house--there are many stories, All of the renters loved the garden front (and gorgeous back--don't even think of that space, btw.)

 

 

We sold that house in 2006 or so. The first couple kept the front pristine. Let's not discuss what they did with the back. They sold. The second couple did even less damage. The third buyers' father was a landscraper. They scraped the spruce--in fact everything in that bed. Left it blank--except for weeds.

I hadn't driven by Eudora (as I called it) for a few months. Finally did on Tuesday. That's my rear view mirror (sometimes one must peer backwards you know).

Back to ground Zero. I didn't look carefully--perhaps they've planted some small "uprights" in front. Remarkably close to what it was when we bought it for $75,000. I take a bit of gleeful (and guilty) schadenfreude knowing they paid fifteen or twenty times that. I am a philosopher--I know it's a free country (sort of--let's see when the Orange thing finishes how free we are). People can do with their gardens what they wish. I'm sure they don't have to spend a lot of time watering (maybe they have a watering system?). So they mow every week--every few weeks.

I did nothing here but marvel, plant gems, harvest bounties of seed, delight and pull the very occasional weed. No watering. Excuse my language. F%ck "clean and green". 

Tempus fugit. πάντα ῥεῖ. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

P.S. Should the current owners of this house stumble on this post, I want to reassure you (them?) that seeing the garden thus did give me a bit of a jolt--that passed relatively quickly. And of course I have some nostalgic regret--which I hope I've properly distilled in this note. I do not bear any personal animosity to you or even your taste (which I do not share, obviously). Being a perennial optimist, I realize that if all gardens in the Front Range were designed like mine, so much summer irrigation water would be freed up that development on the plains could continue unabated. I know an acute drought now (and it surely will come) will leave this yard and others like it brown and sere all summer. But I also know bluegrass will survive and green up in the fall and work just fine. The fact so many gardens are heavily irrigated helps thwart developers and likely slows down the population boom in Denver. So by all means, plant that bluegrass! Put in those sprinkler systems! You go, Girl! Or Fella as the case may be!