Spring 2003: A Season in the Garden

June 23, 2003 · Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado

Spring comes late and slow to the high country, and then arrives all at once, which catches newcomers out every year.

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.

Patience is the rule. The last hard frost can land in early to mid June up here, so the tender things wait while the cold-tolerant ones go in the ground.

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.

Aside from the weather, here is what was on our minds in the garden this season. The wildflowers that light up our hillsides in summer can earn a place in the garden too, as long as you source them as seed or nursery plants and never dig them from the wild. Blanket flower, blue flax, lupine, pasque flower, and sulphur flower all settle in happily and ask for little. They want lean soil and full sun, the opposite of pampering, which suits a low-water garden perfectly.

Go easy on the beds while they are wet with snowmelt, since working saturated soil compacts it for the season, and firm any plants the freeze and thaw has heaved.

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.

We design, build, and maintain our own gardens, so we live with the results for years and learn from them.

We will see you next season.