Spring 2008: A Season in the Garden
· 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.
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.
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.
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.
A seasonal tip worth passing along. Pruning scares people, and bad pruning is genuinely harmful, so a few rules go a long way. Prune most trees and shrubs in late winter while they are dormant, before the sap runs, which is also when you can see the structure clearly. The exception is spring bloomers like lilac and serviceberry, which you prune right after they flower so you do not cut off next year's buds.
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.