Gratitude from The Gardens

Gratitude from The Gardens

by Michelle Provaznik, Executive Director

To our Gardens friends and family -

On behalf of the entire Gardens on Spring Creek team, thank you. Your support over the last two months, and especially over the last two weeks during our Spring Plant Sale, has been simply amazing. As I was loading plants into your cars, several of you asked how things were going so I wanted to update you on several things.

This year’s virtual Spring Plant Sale was the absolute best ever! Here are some stats:

Total sales: $118,048
Total plants sold: 28,005
Total plants grown by The Gardens: 25,633 or 92%
Number of orders filled: 1,849

Pulling this event off without our beloved volunteers was no small feat. The small, yet mighty Gardens staff did an outstanding job growing beautiful plants, tagging them, building the shopping website, fulfilling orders and developing a curbside pickup plan in six short weeks – all while keeping socially distant. My deepest appreciation to everyone on our team for stepping up and leaning in to get it done – with fantastic results.

Thank you also to our partners at Colorado State University. They did a beautiful job growing many of the annuals and all the hanging baskets available – without the help of their practicum students. We are grateful for this long-standing partnership.

Our thanks to everyone who renewed or became Members in recent weeks. Memberships are absolutely critical to organizations like ours and during this particular time as budgets continue to become more challenging. We are grateful for your financial support and belief in our mission.

While our focus has been the Plant Sale, please know that we are working behind the scenes on a reopening plan. I am in regular communication with public gardens around the state, region and country on best practices to re-open gardens. In addition, we are making changes to align with CDC, State of Colorado and Larimer County guidelines so we can re-open as safely as possible.

Our gardens are filled with hope, healing, learning and inspiration. They are a place to connect with the beauty of nature – all things we need now more than ever. We look forward to welcoming you back to The Gardens on Spring Creek soon. When we have more information, you will be the first to know.

Hornworms by Brionna McCumber

Gardeners in Colorado may find large green caterpillars with an iconic horn on their plants every summer—these are hornworms! Tobacco hornworms ( Manduca sexta ) feed on common garden crops, often leading to conflict with humans. These very hungry caterpillars are defoliators, damaging plants such as tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, and eggplant. While the caterpillars use crops as a food source, which could be seen as negative, the moths provide a critical step in reproduction for the plants via pollination. Carolina Sphinx Moths ( Manduca sexta ), also called Hummingbird moths, are the adult form of hornworm s. They are known for their unique ability to hover mid-flight. Combined with the use of a special elongated proboscis, these moths are especially important for plant species with long tubular flowers that other pollinators cannot access or pollinate. The Gardens on Spring Creek Butterfly House wants to highlight the importance of these specialized pollinators in our...

Winter Watering by Bryan Fischer

O ne of the brightest spots of living on the Front Range of Colorado is its winters. With more than 300 days of sunshine annually, we seldom see extended periods of the grey, chilly, precipitating skies common in so much of the country. It’s not unusual for daily highs to make it above 50 degrees. Much of this we have our elevation and distance from an ocean to thank – our sunlight is more intense than at sea level and our humidity lower, resulting in greater warming during the day compared to regions of similar latitude to our east or near a coastline .  Unfortunately for many landscape plants, however, that same day-night temperature differential spells trouble when paired with our lack of soil-insulating snow cover.  The resulting environment of warm days, frequent wind , and intense sun increases water demand, while low humidity saps the soil moisture reserves that our limited precipitation may provide. As a result, our landscape plants are predisposed to dehydration-indu...

Conifers: Pining for Something Different by Bryan Fischer

Evolving considerably earlier than flowering plants (angiosperms), conifers represent a long-lived and successful lineage of trees classified as gymnosperms. Gymnosperms were among the first true seed-bearing plants and evolved before specialized pollinators existed, so they are typically wind-pollinated. Seeds on these plants are produced between or on scale-like structures (think pine cone scales), rather than in fully enclosed structures, like tomato fruits. Gymnosperm, in fact, is Greek for “naked seeds,” so just imagine what that might imply for the origin of the word “gymnasium” … Long-lived, adaptable and attractive year-round, conifers represent a silver bullet of sorts for our Colorado gardens. Sadly, the overuse of just a few species and cultivars of these plants has given them a bad name. Don’t be put off – judicious use of conifers makes perennial plantings “pop” and provides structural bones during the fall and winter months. Below, find a selection of underused, adap...

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