A Spring Stroll Through Denver Botanic Gardens

I’m taking a little break from my New Zealand blog marathon (just a few gardens left, and I’ll get to them later) to jaunt on down to the high plains of Colorado and take you on a spring stroll through Denver Botanic Gardens. I was there about 10 days ago en route to Utah and then Texas, and it was a tulip extravaganza. The garden made sure everyone driving along York street got a colourful eyeful……

….. and they were planted in sunset colours at the entrance.

Going in, we were impressed by the towering specimens of coral tower-of-jewels (Echium wildpretii), a show-stopper if there ever was one!

The honey bees were enjoying it too (all echiums are great pollinator plants).

We made a beeline (haha) for the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. This is what it looks like from the far side of DBG’s outdoor UMB Bank Amphitheatre (aka best-ever-hill-rolling-for-little-kids-spot).

And this is what that roof looks like inside.

I climbed to the top to see the queen’s wreath (Petrea volubilis), which was happy in the heat and humidity.

Every time I go into a tropical glasshouse, I discover something new and fun – like this variegated clown fig (Ficus aspera ‘Parcelii’).

But it was a beautiful spring Saturday and I was eager to see the outdoor gardens, so we went past yet another little colony of Star Trek-like towers-of-jewel….

….. into Shady Lane, where people were enjoying all the different crabapples in bloom.

If they paid attention, they’d have gleaned lots of lessons in woodland underplanting, like this yellow Tulipa tarda with Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla)….

….. and red-flowered barrenwort (Epimedium x rubrum) with windflowers (Anemone blanda).

Walking on, we came to the brand-new (2016) Steppe Garden. What an undertaking this was, but a perfect choice for Denver, which sits in the high foothills of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains!  In the Central Asian Steppe, below, I loved the combination of the Fritillaria pallidiflora, native to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, Iris bucharica and Tulipa greigii.

The bumble bee below was gathering lots of pollen from the fritillaria.

Isn’t this water feature fabulous?

And look, a sweet little Iberis taurica, from Turkey, peeking out from the stacked limestone of the fountain.

I can hardly wait to come back next June (yes, my annual Garden Bloggers’ Fling is happening in mid-June 2019 right here in Denver!) to see the North American Steppe with all its native penstemons.

Water runs throughout DBG in the form of canals, formal pools, waterfalls and freeform ponds. It reflects the blue of the sky and is the perfect place to exhibit large sculpture, like Frank Swanson’s ‘Reflections’. And yes, that little girl seeing her reflection did have parents nearby watching.

Springtime at a botanical garden, before the perennials emerge and shrubs and trees leaf out – but when the crowds begin to arrive – is dependent on the early show of tulips, daffodils, tulips and other spring bulbs. When I was in the Annuals Garden & Pavilion, visitors all had their cameras and phones out…..

……to record the brilliant display of tulips and other bulbs….

……. in the area that will later feature an annuals display.

On the margins, there were also spring-blooming perennials, like this sumptuous combination of blue Siberian bugloss (Brunnera macrophylla) with purple violas.

The Ann Montague Iris & Daylily Garden was getting ready to strut its stuff. How wonderful this garden would be in late spring and early summer!

DBG’s theme gardens are very specific, which is great if you have a particular craving to see, for example, a good selection of plants in the Dwarf Conifer Garden, below.

While other botanical gardens might feature flowering bulbs in spring, DBG has flowering cacti! Not sure of the identity of the sweet thing below, with Bell’s Twinpod (Physaria bellii) in the Desert Wash Garden.

Apart from the plants of the steppe, Denver Botanic Gardens is renowned for its meandering Rock Alpine Garden.  Those purplish pools are….

…. lovely blue wooly speedwell (Veronica pectinata).

Spring adonis (A. vernalis) was lighting up the gravel, too!

A little background here: I visited DBG for the first time in 2006, and through an interesting set of circumstances my husband and I were toured around by DBG’s current Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis (since that bio, he’s co-authored a book titled Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-Arid Regions, Timber Press, 2015). For 90 minutes, Panayoti whisked us from one garden to another, waxing poetic on each theme and heaping praise on the talented staff who worked there.  Subsequently we met each other as plant geeks on Facebook; then in January he was the American Horticultural Society host on the New Zealand garden tour on which my husband and I visited all the fabulous gardens I’ve been blogging about for the past few months. This is Panayoti and me heading into a small boat to explore the reaches of Fiordland’s spectacular Doubtful Sound.

Back to the Alpine Rock Garden…. The wonderful Crevice Garden, below, is the work of Mike Kintgen.

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I loved this pretty combination of Bergenia ciliata and Scilla forbesii.

The plants below are growing in “limestone cliffs” habitat.

I found this gorgeous Paeonia mascula at the edges of the Alpine Rock Garden.

And there are one or two troughs in this area as well, with tiny treasures for the most avid alpine fans.

In the shade of the Cactus & Succulent House, I found a few fritillaries, including Fritillaria acmopetala.

At the very edge of the rock gardens was a stand of western river birch (Betula occidentalis), a tree I didn’t know at all and was happy to discover.

The Gates Montane Garden contains plants that you might see in Colorado’s mountain habitats, especially in the Bear Creek Canyon where the late Charles C. Gates (to whom the garden is dedicated) once resided, like the mountain alders (Alnus incana ssp. tenuifolia) below.

And here I found wax currant (Ribes cereum) with its dainty, white flowers.

As if knowing that a montane garden is the perfect place for a Colorado native, this cottontail rabbit was busy munching grasses.

Just beyond was a perfect view of the eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) casting a reflection on the pond in the Shofu-En Japanese Garden.

There is nothing like looking through a redbud.

Walking around the pond, I came to a spot that looked out on the exquisitely-pruned pines in the Japanese garden.

Next up was a garden that would be a treat to visit in summer, the Laura Smith Porter Plains Garden, honouring the woman who in the 1800s came as a child in a covered wagon to Denver City.  There were some interesting succulents, but prairie flowers were still weeks away. That frieze is very interesting. It’s called The Story of a Pikes Peaker and was carved in 1925 by Robert Garrison for the Midland Savings Bank.  Romanesque in style, it is decidedly western in theme and, though it might be considered insensitive some 90 years later with its one-sided version of the battles between “Pikes Peak or Bust” pioneers and native Americans, it is certainly impressive and lends a stately frontier air to this little piece of the grassy plains.

Back in the central part of the garden, there was more water and a waterfall. Do you see that little American toad?

It was doing a frog-kick.

And I couldn’t help but video the chorus of toads in this pool (I think it’s the Monet Pool.) Listen…..

Circling around the pool, we came to Le Potager. Though the rhubarb was looking fine and the lettuce under its protective mesh (mmm…. bunnies…) was ready for salads, most of the planting here was still to be done.

The Sacred Earth Garden was just waking up, but it features plants traditionally used by the more than twenty Native American tribes of the Colorado Plateau, which includes parts of Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

I found Texas madrone (Arbutus xalapensis) with its pretty white flowers in the Dryland Mesa Garden here……

Flanking the pool on the side of the conservatory, I discovered the Plant Select Demonstration Garden, featuring plants especially chosen, grown and marketed as ideal for low-water areas with extremes of winter and summer temperatures. The program, now 21 years old, was launched with the help of Panayoti Kelaidis. You can hear him talking about plants like the ice plant below Delosperma ‘P001S’, aka Fire Spinner, in this video.

This little Plant Select native Clematis hirsutissima var. scottii or Scott’s Sugarbowls caught my eye.

Doing a wide swing and heading back into the garden, we walked over to the Science Pyramid, below, but time was running out.

We gazed up the length of the El Pomar Waterway. In a month or so, those containers will be filled with succulents and ornamental grasses will swish along the canal.

At The Ellipse in Honor of Nancy Schotters, the gardeners had done a splendid job of matching up tulips in the shape and colours of the Dale Chihuly sculpture in the centre of the pool.

We passed by the Schlessmann Plaza…..

…. and the water wall at the York Street end of the El Pomar Waterway.

The O’Fallon Perennial Walk was just waking up, the perennials poking out of the ground, …….

….. but my memories of it in June from my 2006 visit, below, will help you understand how gorgeous this will be later.

Since we had started our day in Toronto at 4:30 in the morning, I was too tired to head across York Street to visit the Children’s Garden and opted to return to the hotel before dinner (and a next-morning flight to Utah). But that omission (and all those gardens that feature summer plants) will be remedied in June 2019, when I return to Denver Botanic Gardens with my Garden Blogger friends!

A Visit to Idaho Botanical Garden

Before the bloom is off the rose, I’d like to take you on a tour of the Idaho Botanical Garden. This has been sitting in my to-do pile for a year, the delightful culmination of a trip we made to the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park and Sun Valley, Idaho last September. That morning, we’d driven down from Sun Valley, elevation 5945 feet, with its ski runs visible, below…..

Sun Valley Idaho-summer

….to Boise, 2730 feet.The late summer scenery on the 160-mile drive down was at first sage-dominated high rangeland (ecologically termed “sagebrush steppe”) flanking the Sawtooth National Forest….

Rangeland-Sawtooth National Forest

….and later, as we descended towards Highway 84 near Mountain Home, Idaho, gold and green farm grasses and picturesque grain silos against a backdrop of the indigo-shaded mountains of the Sawtooth Range.

Grain silo-Sawtooth Range-Idaho

How I would love to have been on this road in spring – an entire camas prairie!

Camas Prairie-Centennial Marsh

After making the turn onto Highway 84, we headed northwest into Boise where I had arranged to meet my garden writing colleague Mary Ann Newcomer, author and host of Dirt Diva on Boise radio. (If you’ve got a few minutes, listen to this excellent interview with her on North State Public Radio.) She kindly picked us up at our hotel after lunch and chauffeured us to the botanical garden where she spent 10 years as a board member and continues her relationship today as the garden updates certain sections.

Janet Davis & Mary-Ann Newcomer (2)

We entered via the newly-installed, Franz Witte-designed Entrance Garden.

Entrance garden-Idaho Botanical Garden-Boise

Coming in we passed a display of annuals that was as beautifully-maintained as it was colourful!

Annuals - Idaho Botanical Garden

There was a wedding reception going on in the English garden when we arrived, but we asked permission to sneak in.

English garden terrace-Idaho Botanical

Mary Ann continues to be particularly involved in the English garden, now undergoing a design update to accommodate the increased shade of trees that were tiny sticks when installed years ago, like the lovely katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) below…

Katsura tree-Idaho Botanical

I liked the unobtrusive shrub support for this clematis.

Clematis-English Garden-Idaho Botanical

Iron gates created a lovely flow through this garden.

Gate-English garden-Idaho Botanical

Late summer perennials, shrubs and grasses were in their glory, like the blue mist bush (Caryopteris x clandonensis) with feather reed grass (Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’) below.

Caryopteris & Calamagrostis-Idaho Botanical Garden

There were some sweet surprises, too, like this miniature pumpkin vine climbing the upright stems of fernleaf elderberry (Sambucus canadensis ‘Laciniata’).

Fernleaf elderberry & pumpkin vine-Idaho Botanical

We were chatting so much, I didn’t pay close attention to our meander into other areas, including the Rose Garden. Looking up through rose blossoms at a former prison watchtower, this is when you understand that the Idaho Botanical Garden is situated on the former site of the Idaho Penitentiary.  And though all the buildings now house botanical garden administration offices, etc., it’s a remarkable use of historic property.

Watchtower-Idaho Botanical

We passed some fun metal sculptures.

Sculptures-Idaho Botanical Garden

I loved this little inset border of colourful annuals beside the Meditation Garden.

Meditation garden-Idaho Botanical

In the Children’s Garden was a fabulous display of carnivorous plants. What a great teaching opportunity this is. (And yes, that’s native annual sunflower behind!)

Carnivorous plants-Children's Adventure Garden-Idaho Botanical Garden

And this looked like great fun for kids.

Children's Adventure-Garden-Idaho Botanical

For this high desert climate (Boise is classified as USDA Zone 7, but frequent, sustained winter lows have persuaded Mary Ann that it’s safer to buy plants for Zone 5), Idaho Botanical Garden features an important garden, the Plant Select® Demonstration Garden.  Based on a program developed by Denver Botanic Garden and Colorado State University, these are plants that are adapted to Boise’s hot, dry summers.  I loved this combination of Bouteloua gracilis ‘Blonde Ambition’ and Wright’s buckwheat (Eriogonum wrightii var. wrightii).

Bouteloua 'Blonde Ambition' & Eriogonum wrightii var. wrightii-Idaho Botanical

And this little firecracker has become a new “it” plant: ‘Marian Sampson’ hummingbird mint (Monardella macrantha).

Monardella macrantha 'Marian Sampson'-Plant Select

What about this gorgeous Mojave sage, Salvia pachyphylla?

Salvia pachyphylla-Mountain Desesrt Sage-Idaho Botanical

As we left the Plant Select® garden, I stopped to admire a little sagebrush lizard.

Sagebrush Lizard-Idaho Botanical Garden

We passed by the beautiful Herb Garden….

Herb Garden-Idaho Botanical

…. but stopped for a bit in the Vegetable Garden.

Vegetable garden-Idaho Botanical

Check out the cages on those berries! That’s the way to outsmart birds and rodents.

Vegetable garden-protective cages-Idaho Botanical

You can grow grapes in the high desert!

Grapes-Idaho Botanical

Then it was on to the Summer Succulent Garden.

Summer Succulent Garden-Idaho Botanical

I could have spent a lot of time studying the various opuntias and cylindropuntias…..Summer Succulent Garden-Cactus-Idaho Botanical

But we were heading up to another of Mary Ann’s favourite areas: the Lewis & Clark Native Garden. The garden celebrates a score of native plants, including many that were recorded for the first time by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and their Corps of Discovery during their President Thomas Jefferson-commissioned 1803-05 expedition west through the Louisiana Territory to the Pacific.

Jefferson-Lewis-Clark
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For me, this fabulous garden represents what botanical gardens should be doing everywhere: celebrating locally indigenous plants according to their geographical and ecological niches, and showing visitors the rich diversity of flora native to their region. Here the stone marker is appropriately flanked with snowberry (Symphoricarpos albus), a plant observed by Lewis near Missoula, Montana on August 13, 1805.

Lewis & Clark Native Plant Garden-snowberry-Idaho Botanical

I saw plants I’d never heard of before on this path, like fernbush (Chamaebatiaria millefolium), with its big, bee-friendly panicles……

Fernbush-Chamaebatiaria millefolium

…..  and cascara buckthorn (Rhamnus purshiana), whose dried bark was used as a laxative by the Native Americans of the Pacific northwest, then by colonialists. (I even recall cascara being in medicine cabinets when I was a girl!)

Rhamnus purshiana-Cascara buckthorn

In the Western Waterwise Garden…..

Western Waterwise Garden-Idaho Botanical

….. I found beautiful creeping hummingbird trumpet (Zauschneria garrettii ‘Orange Carpet’)….

Zauschneria garrettii 'Orange Carpet'

In the Wetlands Garden….

Wetlands Garden-Idaho-Botanical

…. there was familiar Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium)….

Mahonia aquefolium-Oregon grape

…. and unfamiliar black or Douglas hawthorn (Crataegus douglasii), ultimately named for David Douglas, who later collected the seed in his explorations of the west….

Crataegus douglasii-Douglas hawthorn

…. and lovely streambank wild hollyhock (Iliamnia rivularis).

Iliamna rivularis-Streambank wild hollyhock-Idaho Botanical

Then I was exploring Plants of the Canyons. I loved this creative way of showing off Idaho natives!

Plants of the Canyons-Idaho Botanical

Beargrass (Xerophyllum tenax) was collected by Lewis & Clark on June 15, 1806, on the Lolo Trail in Idaho’s Bitterroot Mountains. Clearly, young plants are a favourite of hungry herbivores up here!

Xerophyllum tenax-beargrass-Lewis & Clark-Idaho Botanical

Here is beautiful western columbine (Aquilegia formosa), recorded by the explorers the very next day, June 16th.

Aquilegia formosa-western columbine

Nine days later, on June 25, 1806, they found scarlet gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata) on the Lolo Trail.

Ipomopsis aggregata-Scarlet gilia-Lewis & Clark-Idaho Botanical

Look at the beautiful markings of scarlet gilia, which show stripes typical of the colour shift that occurs in some populations of this species later in the season.  According to the USDA: “Red-flowered races of scarlet gilia tend to be pollinated mostly by hummingbirds, which are especially attracted to the color red because of their outstanding vision. White flowers are more attractive to moths that visit the gilia flowers at dusk or nighttime and are drawn by the flower’s unpleasant scent. Scarlet gilia blooms over much of the summer and in some populations blossoms that emerge from May to July are red and hummingbird pollinated, while flowers that mature later in July and August are white and pollinated by moths. This color shift can even be observed among different flowers on the same plant.

Ipomopsis aggregata-closeup-Scarlet gilia

To treat his fever and intestinal condition, Lewis made a dark tea of chokecherry bark (Prunus virginiana), shown in fruit below, collected May 29, 1806 near present day Kamiah, Idaho.

Prunus virginiana-Chokecherry-Lewis & Clark

Oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor) was noted on the same day.

Holodiscus discolor-Oceanspray-Lewis & Clark-Idaho Botanical

Nootka rose (R. nutkana) had already formed hips. It was observed in flower on the Wieppe Prairie by Lewis & Clark on June 10, 1806.

Rosa nutkana-Nootka rose-hips-Lewis & Clark

In the grasses grew annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus), so elegant and simple – unlike the big, multi-coloured forms produced by hybridizers over the past two centuries. Its height was impressive to Sgt. John Ordway, who referred to it as “weedy” on August 13, 1804. He wrote: “we crossed the North branch and proceded along the South branch which was verry fatigueing for the high Grass Sunflowers & thistles &C all of which were above 10 feet high

Helianthus-annuus-Idaho-Bot

Annual great blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata) was observed by the expedition in what is now Lewis & Clark County (Helena), Montana, on July 7, 1806.

Gaillardia aristata-Great blanketflower-Lewis & Clark

On February 2, 1806, the Lewis & Clark expedition was at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, when blue elderberry (Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea) was collected.

Sambucus nigra ssp. cerulea-Blue elderberry-Lewis & Clark

Prickly pear (Opuntia polyacantha) was observed on September 19, 1804 in Lower Butte, South Dakota, but its effects were regularly felt by the Corps of Discovery. Wrote Clark: “… as the thorns very readily perce the foot through the Mockerson; they are so numerous that it requires one half the traveler’s attention to avoid them.”

Opuntia polyacantha-Prickly pear-Lewis & Clark

Ponderosa pine, of course, is the predominant conifer in this region. When Clark was preparing to navigate the Columbia River in the fall of 1805 and his men were ill and weak, he felled ponderosas and hollowed them out by burning so they could serve as canoes. The seeds are edible, and the pitch from the tree could be used to waterproof the canoes, but it was also used as chewing gum and as a glue to fix arrowheads to the shafts.

Pinus ponderosa-Lewis & Clark

I finally reached the top and saw a small garden devoted to Sacajawea (c. 1787-1812). As a child in the Shoshone nation, she had been kidnapped and raised by the Haditsa tribe before being sold in 1804 to French-Canadian fur trapper Toussaint Charbonneau.  However unsavory her husband (nine years earlier, he had been stabbed by an old Saultier woman in Manitoba for raping her daughter, and he was already married to a Shoshone when he married Sacajawea), Clark valued Sacajawea immensely for her knowledge of the Shoshone language and arranged for her, Charbonneau (who spoke Haditsa) and his other wife, Otter Woman, to accompany the expedition as translators. In February 1805, Sacajawea’s son Jean Baptiste was born on the trail.

Sacajawea's-Garden-Idaho-Bo

Not only did Sacajawea find food for the expedition from the land, including hog peanuts (Amphicarpa bracteata) and Indian breadroot (Pediomelum esculentum), she provided valuable information on the navigability of the Missouri River, in Montana, having recognized it from her childhood with the Shoshone. On August 17, 1805, Clark  watched as she was reunited with her brother Cameahwait, the Shoshone chief.  She and Otter woman then translated communications from the Shoshone to the Haditsa language, which Charbonneau was then able to translate into English for Clark and Lewis. After the gruelling 3-week trek through the Bitterroot Mountains they finally reached a tributary of the Columbia River.  The painting below by famed Montana artist Charles Marian Russell was made in 1905, exactly 100 years later, titled “Lewis & Clark on the Lower Columbia”, and shows Sacajawea gesturing to unidentified Indians of a West Coast tribe.Charles Marion Russell-1905-Lewis & Clark on the Lower Columbia

In early winter, Clark and Lewis reached the Pacific Ocean. When a trip was arranged to procure whale meat, Clark wrote of Sacajawea: “She observed that She had traveled a long way with us to See the great waters, and that now that monstrous fish was also to be Seen, She thought it verry hard that She Could not be permitted to See either (She had never yet been to the Ocian).”  She and Charbonneau were allowed to go. They began the return trip in late spring, Jean Baptiste, and the Charbonneau family stayed with the expedition until August, 1806, when Clark offered to set them up in St. Louis and oversee the education of Jean Baptiste, whom he had nicknamed “Pompey”, his version of the Shoshone word for “firstborn”.  Though Charbonneau refused initially, in September 1809 he bought land from Clark and tried his hand at farming for 18 months, before quitting and departing with Sacajawea, leaving behind their 5-year old son to be raised by Clark. Sacajawea would die of typhus a few years later, four months after giving birth to their daughter Lisette. Eventually, the guardianship of both children would be transferred to Clark.

Sacajawea-sign-Idaho Botanical

It would have been wonderful to visit Sacajawea’s garden in spring, when the camas is in bloom.

Camassia quamash-Camas lily

As it was, I had to content myself with enjoying this sculpture by Rusty Talbot called Camas Lily/Sacajawea.

Sacajawea-Camas-Lily-Rusty-

Standing at the Promontory, I was able to look down at the old prison buildings below through two more common sage steppe plants mentioned by Lewis & Clark, green rabbitbrush (Chrysothamnus viscidiflorus) with yellow flowers in the foreground, and rubber rabbitbrush or chamisa (Ericameria nauseosa) with glaucous leaves beyond.

Promontory view-Idaho Botanical

I could have dallied for hours more, but it was time to make the trek back down. Thank you, Mary Ann Newcomer, for introducing me to your special garden. I learned so much!