Summer 2009: The Beetle Epidemic Peaks
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
The long days of summer are when the gardens finally do the thing they were drawn and built to do.
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 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.
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.
The mountain pine beetle outbreak hit its peak this year, marking several million acres of Colorado forest. We spent a lot of time that summer thinking about resilience and planting for a future with fewer guarantees.
We also spent time this season on the everyday craft of the garden. A water feature earns its place less for how it looks and more for how it sounds, the way moving water pulls a garden together and quiets everything around it. We tune a waterfall the way you would tune an instrument, mixing high notes from thin sheets of water with low notes from deeper drops. A pool at the base breaks the flow and gives the sound a place to rest.
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.