Gardens Navigator Home Page
I am excited to introduce you to a new member of the Denver Botanic Gardens family.
Gardens Navigator is a website that you can now access from your home computer or mobile device to learn more about the Gardens and the plants you see growing here.
This website takes you inside of the Gardens’ plant collections; you can search for plants by common or scientific name, by location or flower color. You can also learn more about individual gardens or take a tour of specific groups of plants, like the “Champion Trees” or “Palms in the Conservatory.” Maps, images and descriptions of the plants round out the information you can see on this new website.
Read more »
Sometimes we have plants growing in our garden collections that aren’t quite who we thought they were. Usually when we receive a new accession into the living collections, we have information of what the name of the plant is, where it came from (nursery or collection site in nature) and if it is a seed, cutting or plant. Fortunately, 99.9% of the time, the listed name is correct. Unfortunately this 0.1% can create a plant “identity crisis” for us!
Recently this occurred for a tree growing in the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. It had been labeled as Garcinia mangostana (mangosteen, a tropical fruiting tree) and in the 8 years that I walked past the tree, mapped it, photographed it in flower and wondered if it would ever fruit, I took it for granted that it was, in fact, Garcinia mangostana. A researcher from Kew Gardens in England contacted me to learn more about the G. mangostana and how it was doing in our conservatory. I proclaimed that it was healthy, about 20 feet tall and had flowered but never fruited. The researcher’s excitement at this communication made me wonder what was so special about this plant which I then Googled, took one look at the pictures of the flowers and said “Oh no!” You see, the images were of medium-sized pale pink flowers and our plant’s flowers are extremely white and miniscule in size.
Read more »
Mountain ash
Bright red fruit on Sorbus aucuparia 'Fastigiata'
This mountain ash had visitors stopping and staring and then asking “What is THAT?” yesterday. It is a slow-growing tree and according to Michael Dirr in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants,
“Upright with strongly ascending branches, dark green leaves, good large sealing wax red fruits…”
I like the clump form with multiple glossy gray trunks which are also stunning in winter after the leaves drop. It flowers in spring with large flat clusters of white flowers
Read more »
image and location of Meconopsis
Meconopsis ‘Lingholm’ is currently in bloom in the garden on the north side of the Education Building (adjacent to the temporary visitor parking lot).
Read more »
Pieris japonica
With the move of the gatehouse, you can now see a garden that rarely gets exposure, what we have tagged the north bed of the Picnic Garden.
Read more »
Eranthis hyemalis blooming in Shady Lane on Feb. 25, 2009
The Gardens are quickly springing back to life with the 70+ degree days. I was wondering what was blooming across the rest of the country, so I contacted a few colleagues across the nation to see how their gardens were waking up in comparison to Denver Botanic Gardens.
Denver Botanic Gardens currently has many species of plants in full bloom or just beginning to bloom. Galanthus elwesii (snowdrops), Crocus sp. and cvs., Iris reticulata and its various cultivars, Cornus mas (Cornelian cherry), Eranthis hyemalis (winter aconite) and Helleborus sp. are all blooming. This morning I witnessed some of the magnolias (M. stellata and M. x soulangeana) starting to burst from their buds in the Waring House garden as well where they grow in a sunny spot against a south facing wall.
Read more »
This past couple of weeks while wandering the Gardens and around Denver it seems that there is another fantastic scent greeting my nose around every corner. The cool spring seems to have slowed down the early blooming shrubs and now we have a profusion of flowers that are lasting longer than usual with the cooler temperatures that keep hitting every week (usually with a few snow flakes) helping to keep the flowers lingering.
At the Gardens, lilacs are just starting to bloom, with their sweet scent wafting throughout the Lilac Garden. And while we’re in the Lilac Garden, you cannot forget to kneel down and
Read more »
Posted in: At the Gardens - Comments(0)