Summer 2003: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Summer is the payoff, the season every other one points toward, and in the valley it runs full and green and fast.
The afternoon monsoon storms arrive most days from mid July, brief and loud, and a smart garden leans on them, pulling back the irrigation after a real soaking instead of running the timer.
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.
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.
Aside from the weather, here is what was on our minds in the garden this season. For the hot, dry, gravelly spots where lawn would never survive, creeping thyme and sedum are the answer. Thyme knits into a low mat you can walk on, releases scent when you do, and covers itself in tiny flowers that bees cover in turn. Sedums and hens-and-chicks store water in their leaves, so they laugh off a missed watering and a hard freeze alike.
Stake tall perennials early against the afternoon storms, which bring hail and hard wind along with the welcome rain.
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.