Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway
July 25, 2019 Moss green doors sparkle with tin milagros — an inviting gateway into a garden courtyard. Many people wouldn’t consider buying a house sandwiched between MoPac expressway, a multi-lane highway with freight trains chugging down the center median, and its neighborhood feeder road. But Cynthia Williams Deegan and ...
An exuberant, upcycled, scrap-art garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 21, 2019 Colorful stucco walls! Upcycled metal garden art! Octopus planters! Agaves (atop caged columns) and alliums and poppies! Amusing vignettes! As soon as we stepped off the bus at Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), I knew this garden would be one of my tour favorites. Who could ...
Steppe garden evangelist Panayoti Kelaidis’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 18, 2019 Despite its Mile High City moniker, Denver is not a mountain town. True, the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies loom on its western horizon, but Denver sits on a relatively flat, semi-arid, grassy plain — aka a steppe, one of the 4 vast steppe ecosystems in the ...
Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 17, 2019 Part of the Mordecai Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited during the Denver Fling (June 2019), sits atop a parking garage, making it one very large rooftop garden. A pretty alpine garden, including this crevice garden, greets you as you enter, and it surprised ...
Crevice garden, Japanese garden, and more sculpture at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 16, 2019 Continuing with my visit to Denver Botanic Gardens during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), here is my favorite installation in the ongoing Human | Nature exhibit: Lights by Steinunn Thorarinsdottir. Five impassive, rough-hewn figures stand amid the grasses of the Plains Garden. Small holes punched ...
Steppe garden, foxtail lilies, and sculpture at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 16, 2019 All 80+ bloggers had lunch under a pavilion at Denver Botanic Gardens on Day 3 of the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June 2019), and then we were set loose for about an hour. One hour is not enough time to see DBG, of course. One day hardly ...
Containers and color galore in Rob Proctor’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 15, 2019 Rob Proctor has been showing Coloradans how to garden for decades. A former director of horticulture at Denver Botanic Gardens and the author of 17 gardening books, he also appears weekly on Denver’s channel 9 news for a gardening segment called “Proctor’s Garden.” When we arrived at ...
Party under the willow tree in Judy Seaborn’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 13, 2019 Grandmother Willow offers sage advice in Pocahontas. Old Man Willow terrorizes the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. The Whomping Willow bashes the unwary and guards a secret passageway in the Harry Potter series. Why does the willow figure so prominently in our cultural mythology? Perhaps ...
A fusion of nature and art in Scott Deemer’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 11, 2019 A “designer showpiece” garden conveys a grand gesture, expensive hardscaping, and maybe not much in the way of plants. At the home garden of Scott Deemer in Niwot, Colorado, a grand-gesture fireplace and beautifully designed hardscaping create a wow moment as soon as you step onto the ...
Unscripted beauty in Scripter meadow garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 10, 2019 Larry and Mary Scripter grew up in prairie country, Larry on a farm in Kansas and Mary in the Black Hills of South Dakota, surrounded by the Great Plains. So it’s not surprising that they’re drawn to grassy meadow gardens and have created one at their home ...
TatTopia garden embraces stonework and sustainability: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 09, 2019 When the construction dust settled at Tatiana Maxwell’s new energy-wise home, studio, and guest house in Boulder, Colorado, in 2010, the yard was just an expanse of bare dirt. Her first thought was to build an English-style cottage garden. But after brainstorming with stonemason artist Thea Alvin ...
Bowled over by Linda Boley’s garden: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 07, 2019 A copper tree, its muscular branches devoid of leaves, stands as an organic sculpture in the Boulder, Colorado, rock garden of Linda Boley. The painted Japanese lilac caught my eye as soon as our bus arrived during the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019). It signaled ...
Strouse Garden gazes toward the Rockies: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 01, 2019 It’s hard to compete with a grand view of the Rocky Mountains. And why would you? TLC Gardens instead created space-defining, bird-sheltering, pollinator-friendly beds around the Lafayette, Colorado, home of Jim and Laura Strouse, which I toured on Day 2 of the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling (June ...
Jean Morgan’s garden will make you smile: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2019 As our tour bus of 40+ bloggers arrived at the Louisville, Colorado, home of Jean Morgan, one visitor reached down to pick up a stray piece of trash in Jean’s garden. Only the crumpled Hershey bar wrapper wasn’t trash. It’s part of a cheeky vignette — Happily ...
Jan Devore Garden under the pines: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 27, 2019 The first private garden on the Denver Garden Bloggers Fling tour (June 2019) was located in Fort Collins, about an hour north of Denver. From the street, cottage garden favorites greeted us. Owner Jan Devore planted the small front garden with Rosa glauca and purple irises — ...
Feeling beachy in Lucinda’s garden
June 03, 2019 Step through the gate into Lucinda Hutson‘s side garden, and a seashell wreath hints at what’s to come… …a tropicalesque garden where pearl-draped mermaids bask beneath a seashell arch. Strands of capiz shells turn in the breeze, flashing like fish scales amid a school of metal fish, ...
