Spring 2002: A Dry, Anxious Spring
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Spring is the season of false starts, warm days chased by hard frosts, until one morning it is simply real.
The waterfalls come back online first. There is a morning every spring when we open the valves, clear the basins, and listen for the sound to even out, and it is one of the better days of the year.
The first bulbs push through the last of the snow, then the columbine and the early natives, and the whole valley turns green almost overnight once it commits.
Cleanup is the work of the season, though it is less about tidying and more about reading what the winter did: what came through, what did not. We cut back last year's growth and freshen the compost.
The snowpack came in thin and the runoff was weak, and by spring it was clear the valley was heading into a serious drought. Every conversation with a client that year started with water.
On the practical side this season, a note from the field. Growing food at eight thousand feet means working with a season that can run barely ninety frost-free days. Stick with cool-season and fast crops: greens, peas, radishes, kale, chard, and short-season varieties of carrots and beets. Season extension is everything here. A cold frame, row cover, or a simple hoop house can add weeks on both ends.
Hold tender plants and annuals until the frost danger truly passes in June, and keep frost cloth within reach until then.
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.
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.
More when the season changes. As ever, ask if you want a hand with your own piece of the valley.