Spring 2014: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
The valley spends weeks deciding whether to let go of winter, and mud season is the price of admission to spring.
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.
On the practical side this season, a note from the field. The stone in a garden sets its accent, and the most convincing accent is the rock that already belongs to the region. Local moss rock, sandstone, and granite read as if they came from the hillside next door, because more or less they did. Stone trucked in from far away often clashes in color and texture with everything around it, and it costs more in fuel and freight besides.
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.