Fall 2004: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Autumn arrives fast in the high country, and if you blink you miss the best of it, so we try not to blink.
The first hard freeze usually lands in mid September and ends the growing season almost overnight, so the last harvest and the last tender color come in on a deadline.
This is when we put the gardens to bed: cutting back what needs it, leaving seed heads and grasses for the birds and for winter interest, blowing out the irrigation, and shutting down the water features before a freeze can crack a line.
Spring bulbs go in now, tucked where they will be seen from a window come March, which is when they will be needed most.
A seasonal tip worth passing along. Every fall there is a short window between the last warm days and the first hard freeze, and getting the irrigation cleared in that window saves a small fortune in spring repairs. Water left in the lines expands when it freezes and cracks pipes, valves, and backflow assemblies. A compressor pushes the water out zone by zone, and it is worth having it done right rather than guessing.
Watch the early-September forecasts and have frost cloth ready to buy a few more weeks, then get a deep watering in before the ground freezes.
Everything in this valley runs on the same short calendar, and the gardens that thrive are the ones designed around it rather than against it.
Our soil is mostly alkaline clay, the air is thin and dry, and the sun is strong, so the plants that last are the ones that have made peace with all three.
We take on only a handful of gardens each year, which is the only way to give a place like this the attention it asks for.
More than anything, a garden up here rewards patience: it takes a season or two longer to settle than people expect, then looks like it was always there.
We design, build, and maintain our own gardens, so we live with the results for years and learn from them.
The land around us is the best teacher there is, and the gardens we like best borrow from the hillsides more than from any catalog.
That is the season from where we stand. We will check back when the next one turns.