Right Plant, Right Place

quaking aspen, Populous tremuloides

The right place for an aspen tree is not in your urban garden. It's here:

Leave aspen where they can thrive in cool temperatures, and moist soils.

Leave aspen where they can maintain their natural form as a large colony organism.

Leave aspen in their native habitat and let them be your siren call to explore and enjoy Colorado's great outdoors.

Clear Creek County and Park County, Colorado, September 28, 2014

Monday Mash-Up 9/8/2014

September is continuing the summer weather trend of cool temps and rainy afternoons. If and when you need to add some supplemental water to your lawn, Denver Water's recommendation this month — based on three applications per week — is 11 minutes per zone for fixed spray heads and 28 minutes per zone for rotary nozzles.

Denver Botanic Gardens is hosting it's annual fall plant and bulb sale on September 19th and 20th. Standard admission costs apply, but you'll find unusual plants for timely installation. And if you haven't seen the Chihuly glass exhibit yet, you're in for a treat!

If your fall planting plans include incorporating more plants to attract butterflies, here is a resource that matches native butterflies to their preferred nectar providers.

Got tomatoes? Like pie? Herd your tomato harvest into this yummy recipe.

Design Decoded 2.24.2014

sarah price landscapes via Pintrest

Why it works:
This modern take on a prairie or meadow garden is a brilliant combination of structure and softness.  The formal, clipped hedges of evergreen boxwood (Buxus spp.) add just the right amount of contrast and stability to a very loose and organic perennial planting.  Although shown flanking stairs on a moderate slope, this design style would be equally effective on a flat ground plane.  Many of these native plants would work well here but, for our dry, sunny climate I'd switch out the boxwood with green lavender-cotton (Santolina rosemarinifolia) or English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia).

Design Trend 2013

I'm a bit behind the curve in writing about garden trends for 2013.  Probably because I'm not a trendy kinda person.  I'm more about quality classics; things worth investing in that I can enjoy for the long haul. So I just have two words for you today regarding "trends" because I think this idea is a culmination of current gardening passions, low-stress lifestyles, and low-water realities: edible natives.

Forget about boiled aspen bark and cattail roots. I'm talking about easily accessible berries, nuts, and foliage that you can toss in with your breakfast cereal or dinner salad, cook up into a sweet pie or jam, or decoct into a refreshing beverage. These are plants that are available at better nurseries / garden centers along Colorado's Front Range and are already being used in gardens and landscapes of all sizes.  My list focuses on woody plants — those that form the structure of the garden and are your greatest investment.

Nuts
Gambel oak, Quercus gambelii (nuts ground into a flour or meal)
Pinyon pine, Pinus edulis

Berries, best sweetened and cooked
Boulder raspberry, Rubus deliciosus
Golden currant, Ribes aureum

Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana

Sand cherry, Prunus bessei

'Pawnee Buttes' dwarf form of Prunus besseyi

Buffaloberry, Shepherdia argentea

Berries, sweetened for a lemonade-like beverage
Three-leaf sumac, Rhus triloba

Smooth sumac, Rhus glabra

Berries, fresh or dried
Serviceberry, Amelanchier utahensis is the native variety, A. canadensis is available commercially

Are there more choices? You bet. Native grape (Vitus riparia) hawthorns, thimbleberry and elderberry, not to mention all the perennials and herbs (often considered weeds) like horehound (Marrubium vulgare), mint, and chicory. These plants aren't as readily available for purchase, but might be fun to plan a foraging trip around.

Designing a landscape with edible natives means understanding the growing conditions necessary to keep the plants healthy, and combining them in ways to best show off their growth habits, foliage textures and  colors.
Have you been growing edible native plants in your yard?  I'd love to hear about it!

Wordless Wednesday 2.13.2013

little bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparum 

Welcome Fall!

dwarf rabbitbrush, Chrysothamnus nauseosus nauseosus

One of my favorite shrubs is in full bloom right now.  It says "fall is here!" to me like no other plant.  I profiled rabbitbrush, also known as chamisa, here a few years ago.  I'm heading out soon for a road trip through Wyoming and Montana, and I hope to see plenty of this cheery fellow along the way.

Got Stone?

Last Saturday was cool and cloudy, a perfect day to visit Tribble Stone.  Located at the base of the foothills between Boulder and Lyons, Tribble is a great resource for Colorado flagstone (sandstone). They carry both the rose and buff colors, and do custom cutting right on the site.

cut stone in the foreground, "random"  (as in shapes) in the back

Here's a flagstone slab right out of the quarry.  It's about 10" thick and will be split into 3 or 4 pieces by chiseling along the edge and exploiting a natural fault line.

Jim, for scale! Note the natural cracks/faults in the slabs

Or it might go straight to the cutter.  This is a pneumatic chop blade. Awesome!  This is how dimensional stone is cut; 2'x2', 3' x 2' 18" x 18" or whatever you need, it's made to order.

8" thick slab ready to be cut.  Any guesses why this equipment is buried?

Left over bits and bobs? Not great for structural building, but beautiful as a textural element when applied as a veneer to buildings, columns, fireplaces, 

Odd sizes await the creative builder.

or...pots!

Their chokecherries were in fine form, too!

native chokecherry, Prunus virginiana

Note: This article was not endorsed or compensated in any way by Tribble Stone.