Tag: plant selection

Posted on in Landscaping, Media Reviews, Plant Profiles, Xeriscape

Springs-Specific Gardening

Wall Germander (Teucrium chamaedrys)
Prickly Pear (Opuntia sp.)
Hyssop ‘Blue Fortune’ (Agastache)
Cockspur Hawthorn (Crataegus crus-galli)

There is certainly no shortage of advice when it comes to gardening. Everyone has an opinion, and when that fails, there’s the Internet. When you garden in Colorado, however, you quickly learn that much of the advice available doesn’t apply. It’s aimed at gardeners on the coasts, or the Midwest, or even the south—but not a place with harsh winters, false springs, sudden freezes, minimal rainfall, hail, gale-force winds… the list goes on and on. No wonder so many people give up and plant rocks!

(more…)

Posted on in Gardening, Green Gardening Tips, Landscaping, Xeriscape

Stop Fighting Mother Nature

Penstemon 'Red Rocks' @ExtDemoGarden 2008sept25 LAH 264Alkaline soils, sparse rainfall, extreme temperatures, low fertility. Colorado doesn’t exactly sound like a gardener’s paradise. Few places do. Lamenting the current drought and expected summer water restrictions, I often dream of gardening in a place with ample rainfall. Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

Then I visited my daughter in western Washington. She and her husband live in Everett, north of Seattle. They have a view (on a rare clear day) looking east to the Cascades. These impressive mountains form a barrier blocking clouds that would otherwise move on into eastern Washington and Idaho. As a result, my daughter’s area gets a lot of rain.

(more…)

Posted on in Gardening, Landscaping

Hail Survivors

centranthus-helianthemum-penstemon-trio-003Colorado isn’t an easy place to garden. Drought, late frosts and early snow storms, soils of sand and/or clay… to grow anything here, you have to be stubborn—and so do your plants. Our recent storms were so destructive, I thought I’d post something about how you can avoid a lot of hail damage in the first place. At least for ornamental landscapes, the key to surviving hail is plant selection.

A tour of the garden after a major hail storm will reveal some plants that are totally destroyed while others have nary a bruised leaf. What makes some plants hail-resistant?

(more…)