Summer 2000: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Summer in the high country is short and generous, and we spend it mostly watching people use the gardens we planned all winter.
The perennial beds peak in July, and steady deadheading pushes a second flush of color into the cooler nights of late August. The native grasses come into their own as the season ages.
Water is the constant concern. The features run on a closed loop, recirculating the same water, and the planting is grouped so the irrigation only runs where it is needed. In a dry climate, a beautiful garden and a frugal one are usually the same garden.
It is also fire season, never far from anyone's mind in this valley, so we keep the ground near the house lean and green and stay aware of how dry the hills get.
A seasonal tip worth passing along. Water is the constraint that shapes every plant list we make, so we start with species that look good on very little. The reliable xeric performers here include penstemon, agastache, gaillardia, ice plant, sedum, yarrow, and Russian sage. For shrubs, rabbitbrush and blue mist spirea earn their keep, and for grasses, blue grama and little bluestem.
Water early in the morning, before the midday sun and wind carry half of it off, and let the monsoon do the rest when it shows up.
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.
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 will see you next season.