Summer 2010: 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.
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 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.
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.
On the practical side this season, a note from the field. A garden that reveals everything from the front door is a garden you stop looking at after a week. We break larger spaces into rooms, using planting, grade, and stone to hide one area from the next so there is always a reason to walk on. A turn in the path, a gap in a hedge, a glimpse of water through the trees: these are what make a garden feel larger than it is.
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.
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.
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.
That is the season from where we stand. We will check back when the next one turns.