Summer 2011: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
By midsummer the valley is at its peak, the perennials full, the water features earning their keep through the heat.
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. We are lucky to work in a place where the best feature is often outside the property line, and a good design pulls those distant peaks and ridgelines into the composition. The Japanese call it shakkei, borrowed scenery, framing a far view so it becomes part of the near garden. We do it by lining up a gap in the planting, a path, or a gate with a mountain beyond, so the eye travels from your feet to the horizon.
Stake tall perennials early against the afternoon storms, which bring hail and hard wind along with the welcome rain.
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.
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.
More when the season changes. As ever, ask if you want a hand with your own piece of the valley.