Winter 2016-2017: A Season in the Garden
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Winter is when a mountain garden earns or loses its keep, because there are no flowers to hide behind.
The birds keep the place alive in winter, working the seed heads we left standing and sheltering in the spruce, which is reason enough to leave the fall cleanup undone.
Most of our work this season happens indoors at the drawing table, planning the gardens we will build once the ground opens. The cold months are the busiest at the drawing board, even if it does not look that way from the road.
Snow is the headline. A deep, steady snowpack is the best thing that can happen to a garden up here, insulating roots and watering the soil slowly as it melts. A thin, open winter is harder on plants than any cold snap.
We also spent time this season on the everyday craft of the garden. The bristlecone pine is the oldest living thing many people will ever stand next to, with wild specimens in Colorado and the Great Basin measured in thousands of years. In a garden it is slow, sculptural, and perfectly suited to a tough, windy, rocky spot where nothing else looks happy. It wants lean soil and sharp drainage. Rich soil and frequent water are what kill it.
Watch for the heavy, wet storms that snap branches, keep paths safe, and otherwise let the snow lie on the beds where it does the most good.
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.