Posted January 27, 2012 by Matt Cole, Director of Education
A Tangelo blooms in the Denver Botanic Gardens Orangery in winter.
Winter is busy, and not just for Colorado skiers. Gardeners are planning, dreaming and preparing; growers are tending indoor blooms; and propagators are starting plants to be ready for warm weather: busy! Evergreens are balancing photosynthesis and drought, orchids are delivering on the promise of color and beauty, and seeds are trying to intuit the fine line between germinating too soon and too late: busy! For some gardeners, winter means that their busy, short days can’t hold time to appreciate each bloom and everything that is happening.
You can’t always look ahead either. It was pure chance that I saw this white Tangelo blossom on a snowy day. (The Orangery at the Gardens looks lovely with the orchid showcase throughout.)
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Posted January 24, 2012 by John Murgel, Gardener
As the Greek government, its creditors, and the bankers at the International Monetary Fund continue to discuss Eurobonds and interest rates, my thoughts have wandered from the European Central Bank to another sort of bank altogether—the seed bank.
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Posted January 21, 2012 by Featured Instructor
Usually I get to see the look on people’s faces when I give them a bag of delicious produce in winter from my passive solar greenhouse. You should have seen MY face the other day when Cord came home with a large bag of vine-ripened, delicious, juicy winter-grown tomatoes! From somebody else’s greenhouse!
Cord finished building a 44’ state-of-the-art totally sustainable passive solar greenhouse late last August and the owners lost no time in getting tomato plants in the ground soon after. They planted large potted tomatoes in deep beds at the base of the wall of stored water – the thermal mass.
Now, in January, they are 10 feet tall and bursting with tomatoes. Not only were they grown in winter – but with passive solar. And, oh yeah, at 8,000 feet in the mountains!
No tomato ever tasted so good. The juice ran down our chins. I started laughing while I was eating
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Posted January 10, 2012 by John Murgel, Gardener
While taking advantage of the warm daytime temperatures in recent weeks to get some pruning in, I was hailed from the pathway nearby.
“Do you ever worry about seeds coming up early during warm spells like this?”
In a word, “no.” But why not?
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Posted December 2, 2011 by Brien Darby, Greenhouse Production Assistant
From time to time, the greenhouse team at Denver Botanic Gardens will build hypertufa troughs. These troughs are a great addition to a garden, especially for showcasing some of the rock garden plants, native wildflowers, and cacti that might otherwise be lost in a larger landscape. We sell our planted troughs at the Spring and Fall Plant Sales and occasionally throughout the season at the Shop at the Gardens. However, if you are interested in making your own hypertufa troughs, I would like to share with you our process and recipe for making a simple hypertufa trough.
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Posted October 15, 2011 by Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator & Director of Outreach
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Muhlenbergia reverchonii at the Kendrick Lake gardens at dusk
- It isn’t every day a star is born! Trot on down
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Posted October 10, 2011 by Featured Instructor
Rock gardens offer many benefits. They can be tailored to any situation, whether it is sunny and dry, moist and shady, high elevation, rocky soil, or even a balcony in the city. Many rock plants are very forgiving and the wide palate of small plants used in rock gardens means that one can find plants that will do well in any situation.
Few styles of gardening offer as much year around interest in a confined area as rock gardening. The combination of rocks and plants can create a vignette that is pleasing 365 days a year whether it is a containerized rock garden on a balcony or an acre rock garden in a public garden. Rock garden plants tend to be
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Posted October 25, 2010 by Featured Instructor
People moving to Colorado from other parts of the country are often surprised at how hard it can be to get plants to grow well here. Our windy, short-season semi-arid climate is obviously a major contributor to plant problems, but an even more important factor is the condition of the soil. Soil properties and the condition of the soil are the most common inciting factors to plant disorders on the Front Range, yet soil is the resource we usually know the least about.
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