Winter 2022-2023: A Deep Snowpack, At Last
· Escape Garden Design, Aspen, Colorado
Winter settles into the valley for a long stay, and the garden does its quietest, most honest work under the snow.
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.
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.
Out in the garden, the evergreens carry the whole composition now, and a heavy wet snowfall is the one thing worth bundling up for, to brush the weight off upright branches before it splits them.
A genuinely big snow year finally pulled most of the state out of drought for the first time in a long while. You could feel the valley exhale.
Aside from the weather, here is what was on our minds in the garden this season. A boulder dropped on top of the ground looks like a boulder dropped on top of the ground. A boulder set well looks like the land grew up around it. The rule we follow is to bury at least a third of the stone, often more, so it sits into the grade with its best face showing. We orient the bedding lines, the natural grain of the rock, the same way across a group, the way a real outcrop would lie.
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.