The first picture is of the Parterre gardens at the City and County Building which I helped design and maintain with the Master Gardeners of Denver and staff from Denver Parks. I am amused that one of the few large public gardens of which I am a primary designer is a parterre--the most formal of garden styles...Mr. rock gardener does stray a bit.
Horticultural and botanical musings from the Rockies, Great Plains and beyond. In humble tribute to Goddess Flora.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Lavender nation
The first picture is of the Parterre gardens at the City and County Building which I helped design and maintain with the Master Gardeners of Denver and staff from Denver Parks. I am amused that one of the few large public gardens of which I am a primary designer is a parterre--the most formal of garden styles...Mr. rock gardener does stray a bit.
Monday, July 26, 2010
A peek behind the curtain...
Makes a pretty good twin to Monrovia's serried ranks in the previous blog, don't it? Every bit as mind boggling, my first visit to Terra Nova exceeded my rather high expectations. When you have heard Dan Heims as often as I have, and seen those sumptuous images...and when you have grown some of their amazing plants, you begin to think that like the Wizard of Oz, surely the kingdom itself can't also be so wonderful: they must use a bit of smoke and couple dozen mirrors. One wonders if indeed Dan isn't JUST the man behind the curtain...Turns out this wizard doesn't mind if we step behind the curtain with him!
What fun to visit the scene of the crime, as it were...Mecca! No one has done more to transform America's shady corners into gorgeous gardens than this rather youthful business venture. And they are far from done.
Who would have dreamed just a few decades ago that our modest genus Heuchera would eclipse Hosta as the workhorse of shady gardens? And now the Terra Nova magicians are busy on a dozen other groups. Thank you, PPA, for inviting me to attend this year's meeting and finally making my Hadj....Praise to Allah! And his master hybridizer, vizier and magician, his excellency Dan Heims!
Oregon trailblazing
I am a believer in local produce and the craftsmanship of artesenal products of all sorts. Bigger does not mean better in my book (by and large). But my hat goes off to Monrovia: they are the best example I know that bigger can be pretty darned good indeed.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Blue skies and sky blue penstemons
Penstemon crandallii (formerly known as P. teucrioides) not far from its type locality near Como in South Park. The name change is appropriate, since this really is the Prince of penstemons...so to speak! The picture was taken last week, as I drove a van full of North American Rock Garden society annual meeting attendees back to Denver.
This is the fifth annual meeting the Rocky Mountain Chapter has hosted in the last 28 years, which means we have averaged a meeting every 5-6 years. Thanks to (primarily) the enormous efforts of Randy Tatroe, Hugh McMillan, Lee Curtis and a terrific team of guides this meeting was special...there were others who helped a lot, but there are always a few who expend the most effort. The logistics of this sort of thing boggle my mind. So I am grateful that there are those who are good at it. I was not alone in being charmed by Salida, one of Colorado's loveliest and least kitschy mountain towns. The tundra bloomed obligingly, if not quite as vociferously as other years (although reports are that Cottonwood Pass was awesome)...and the venue at the Steam Plant was terrific. Great plant sale. And the food was the best ever!
I feel sorry for those who boast that they are not joiners (loners presumably): the pleasure of the multifarious company of rock gardeners is not to be gainsaid. Such a mottley crew of scholars like the redoubtable and loveable Tony Reznicek, and keen private gardeners (how to pick from the dozens?) from all over North America. I have made many of my dearest friends at these meetings, and reconnecting with them at again is a perennial pleasure. I see Ted Kipping in many guises in my life, but most frequently at meetings where he is a pantemperate endemic. And the charming, beautiful, powerful women of the Rock Garden leadership: Grazyna Grauer, Maria Galletti, Joyce Fingerhut: it is worth the price of the meeting to watch them waft hither and yon like exotic antelopes on the plains of the Serengeti....or perhaps birds of paradise !
On my tombstone let it be engraved: "Here lies the body of a proud NARGS groupie!"
Monday, July 19, 2010
Lilies in Paradise
Okay, Okay...it's Parry's Lily (Lilium parryi) and not strictly speaking paradise, except that they were growing at Laporte Avenue Nursery...which for a plantsman like me IS paradise! I suspect the "Parry" is Charles Christopher Parry, the great botanist, doctor and publicist who spent summers in Grizzly Gulch below Grays Peak and is responsible for naming most of Denver's mountain backdrop after botanists...
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Reunion far from home....
Kazakhstan is 12 time zones around the globe from Colorado (i.e., it's as far to the East as it is to the West...in other words, it's at the ends of the earth). Which is where both the gentleman in the picture and the tree he is shaking leaves/hands with comes from. The man is Vladimir Kolbintsev, a remarkable and wonderful naturalist who is spending three weeks in Colorado
Thursday, July 8, 2010
More serendipity!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Yellow eyed wonder of the Andes
How a plant that could almost become a weed at one point disappears utterly amazes me, but it happens again and again. You can imagine my delight when I saw that there were flats and flats of it at Country Lane. I brought a whole flat home and tucked them here and there (this must have been two years ago) and this spring they have rewarded me with bouquets of those immense salvers with the brown etching inside...I have promised myself never to let it dwindle again!
What is this yellow eyed wonder of the Andes? Sisyrinchium macrocarpum, as far as I know. (It's been put in a number of other genera by various workers, but I think we can ignore that until things truly settle down botanically). I saw many stunning Sisyrinchiums in the Andes, but not this one. As far as I'm concerned, it's a bread and butter alpine everyone should grow. And once again, I shall have tons of seed to share!
Friday, July 2, 2010
What the heck is it?
Above it's next to the veggie garden where it gets lots of water. It can climb to over 6 feet and blooms for weeks, maybe even months on end. It self sows moderately, and more importantly, it lives forever as far as I can tell. It certainly rates near the top of the genus. Last year I had over 300 mulleins in my yard: a few too many I admit. This year I'm down to nearer 100--representing seven or eight species out of the hundreds that crowd the Mediterranean littoral and West Asia. Every time someone drops by I worry they might ask me what it is...
Luckily I've distracted them with lots of other things...Don't share my secret, now....
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A garden near lake Tekapo
The crevice garden of Michael Midgley Just a few years old, this crevice garden was designed and built by Michael Midgley, a delightful ...