Bring More Color to Your Wild Areas

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Wildflower Seeds

by Sandy Swegel

At this time of year when we’re mired in cold and snow, I yearn for two delights of Spring:  when the daffodils and tulips bloom and when the meadows burst with wildflowers.  One thing about wildflowers though, especially in our suburban gardens.  A few years after planting it seems that just a few wildflowers start to dominate.  Often it’s the bachelor buttons and California poppies, both beautiful flowers, but we need diversity and variety and wild color to really shake winter off.

The secret to a lush wildflower area (besides good rainfall) is to over-seed the area every once in a while with some of your favorite flowers.  I usually take the easy way and just throw out a packet of our mixed wildflower seeds to get an overall refreshing of the original mix I planted years ago.  But for one friend who has created a “hot colors” theme of red and orange in her garden, we throw out packets of red wildflowers.  This year we just did a search for Flowers by Color and picked out the flowers we liked with the truest red colors.  We settled on red columbines for Spring, red firecracker penstemons for early summer and red gaillardia for mid-summer.

Finally, my absolute favorite reseeding in the Spring is to seed the Parade of Poppies mix.  There just are never enough poppies of any sort in my mind.  This year I’ve slipped a seed packet in my coat pocket for some guerilla gardening during my sunny day walks along old abandoned properties and ditches that grows lots of weeds.  Poppies will brighten my path this year!

This year I’m also going to try taking a baggie full of our new StrawNet (pellets of straw) when I do my wild area guerilla gardening.  The biggest problem with just throwing seeds out onto abandoned land is that I can’t water them every day.  StrawNet absorbs water and helps create a little moist barrier for new seeds so I expect it to help more seedlings survive even if we have a dry Spring.  Sometimes nature needs a little help to be as beautiful as she can be.

Photo Credit: http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/columbines/images/aschockleyi/aquilegia_schockleyi_habitat_katewalker_lg.jpg

4 Things to Learn from Botanic Gardens

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Waterwise strip of plantings at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Finding Inspiration

by Sandy Swegel

I’ve been going to our local (and extraordinary) botanic gardens, The Denver Botanic Gardens, DBG, every two weeks this year.  Every year I intend to go but get busy and only get there once or so.  But I bought a family membership that included six tickets per visit….so now I’m getting to see the gardens and making new friends every time because I invite all kinds of people so I don’t “waste” the tickets.  Even though I’m a professional gardener and am in other people’s landscapes all the time, I am learning so much. I encourage you to go with observant eyes and watch how public gardens are designed and managed. (On the weeks I don’t go to the DBG, I take a hike in the nearby foothills to see how Mother Nature designs and manages gardens. She’s a bit messier.)

Some of the things I’ve learned this last week:

Plants want to Mingle.  Although DBG tags its plants so we know what is what, they aren’t really a single specimen sitting alone…all the plants grow next to one another and through each others’ branches and leaves.  A tall flower that falls doesn’t need to be staked right away…it starts to grow up toward the light from its down position and still looks great growing out of the groundcover.  Trees and giant viburnums are all artfully pruned so they send long arms through each other, never having to stand alone.  Old trees keep their place, but new ones of a different variety are planted nearby. The old one’s broken trunk and nasty gashes are covered and the new tree doesn’t look so scraggly.

The same plant can look so different in another setting.  The DBG has a policy of gentle tolerance toward reseeding plants.  As long as they look good and aren’t choking out other plants, the repetition of salvia or verbena from one display garden to another gives a feeling of unity to the entire area.

Giant Buddleia bush at the Denver Botanic Gardens.

Photo by Sandy Swegel

Giant plants look great at the periphery.  Giant shrub viburnums or 15-foot tall lilacs or this massive Buddleja alternifolia ‘Argentea’ planted along the far back of a garden area are stately and give a sense of structure and enclosure to a garden. Some of the nearby trees seem small in comparison.  But a garden full of small plants can look like just a lot of little things that are hard to distinguish from one another.

Use more Art and Light and Water.  Sculptural pieces of art, strategically placed solar lights, and even very small water features turn a garden from beautiful into delightful!  As dusk descends on the Denver Botanic Gardens, strands of lights and solitary spotlights come on turning what was a lovely day into a magical evening.

Tour your local Botanic Garden soon.  You’ll find like I did, the inspiration for dozens of ways to do things differently in your garden.

http://www.botanicgardens.org/

Photo credits: Sandy Swegel