The Gardens on Spring Creek

  Flashy August Fillers by Bryan Fischer, Curator and Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek I keep a personal Instagram page. Largely, it features whatever flashy plant or plant community has recently caught my eye. Recently, I posted about Oenothera rhombipetala , or Sand Hills evening primrose, a Great Plains native that is widely underused and a great filler plant where an explosive pop of color is needed. Growing as a rosette in its first year, the plant erupts in July of its second season, sending a luminescent candelabra of four-petaled flowers skyward on tentacle-like stems. Despite the flashy photos and juiced verbiage, however, folks saw something else in my post that they seemed to care about a whole lot more: Penstemon richardsonii (Richardson’s penstemon). It’s always a penstemon!   I get it – any plant that will literally bloom itself to death is bound to catch one’s eye.   While the Oenothera does this as well, there is something special about Richard...

What’s Blooming:  Theme Gardens by Andrew Scott, Seasonal Gardener, Gardens on Spring Creek We are well into summer now, and our gardens have been using their flowers to advertise to pollinators: “Nectar here, inquire within! Reproduction, whoooo!!”   In spite of the recent onslaught of sweltering temperatures, all of our gardens are doing well – constantly changing as different plants cycle through vegetative growth, blooming, fruiting and going to seed. While all our gardens are based around specific themes, our Theme Gardens are a more specific collection of native and cultivated plants.   Composed of five gardens, the Theme Gardens are each small enough to be cohesive on its own, but effortlessly blend together to form a collage of colors, heights, textures, scents and pollinators. Plant Select is the first garden one encounters after crossing over the bridge, flanking visitors on both sides of the walkway with displays of Plant Select® plantings.   Spec...

  What’s Blooming:   The Welcome Garden by Selena Kunze, Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek The Welcome Garden was started in 2019 following completion of construction on the new building addition…or should I say it was pulled from the compacted earth, through parched patches of turf and crushed perennials. Initially coined “The Giant Pit”, lovingly of course, the garden began with removal of the suffering remnants of old beds, long unirrigated because of construction and frequently trampled by equipment and workers. The dwarf Forsythia , originally planted by former Curator Sherry Fuller as babies from her grandmother’s shrubs, were carefully dug and potted, while surviving perennials and grasses were relocated to nearby gardens or divided for our annual Spring Plant Sale. Big Daddy , the praying mantis sculpture made from repurposed metal dumpsters by Josh Jones, was commissioned to keep watch over the canal by the Theme Gardens instead, and volunteers painstakingly ...

Blooms on 'Golden Delicious' apple trees in the Garden of Eatin' What’s Blooming:  Fruit Tree Varieties for the Front Range by Sherry Fuller, Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek Blossoms are starting show, and not much is as rewarding as a large crop of home-grown fruit.   With just a little forethought you can have that bonus in your own yard!     First, a few considerations.   How much room do you have?   Standard size fruit trees can grow too large for a city lot in just a few years.   Dwarf fruit trees are available and are cute, but sometimes the root stocks they are grafted onto aren’t as winter hardy as needed for our climate.   Semi-dwarf trees usually mature in the 10 - 12 feet size range and are often the most readily available at nurseries.   Or consider growing raspberries, currants or strawberries that are much smaller plants.   (More about them later.)   Some varieties of fruit trees won’t produce fruit unles...

  What’s Blooming:  Plans for Vegetable Gardening by Mary Miller, Community Garden and Outreach Coordinator, Gardens on Spring Creek   Each growing season brings new opportunities to one’s garden. Whether your garden space is quite small or is large, spring affords the chance to try a new tomato or add beets and chiles to the list of what to grow. As a nearly-lifelong gardener, I have explored growing a bajillion different varieties of vegetables.   Some are abandoned after the first year.   Others remain as favorites forever (or at least as long the seed remains available).   Sometimes treasured varieties are dropped from the trade. At times, it feels easier to go with what I know and plant many of the same crop varieties season over season.   Responsibilities for me include managing the Gardens on Spring Creek’s Garden of Eatin’.   It is a three-quarter acre site wholly dedicated to edible crops and the plants that support those crops. ...

  What’s Blooming:   Structural Pruning by Jacob Mares, Arborist and Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek   Winter is a great time to take a moment to assess the plants in our landscapes. Deciduous trees remain dormant during these stretches of low temperatures, and the absence of leaves provides us with an opportunity to critique and correct structural issues.  Often, the care of trees in our landscape is relegated to what happens at ground level. While watering and mulching are integral parts of establishing healthy trees, the shape of your trees’ crown can develop problems over time that can lead to limb failure and an untimely demise. We can mitigate this damage by correcting structural defects early and often. Keeping an eye out for these problems starts the minute we purchase the tree and should continue well into the tree’s lifetime. Most trees can be assessed and / or pruned every other year during establishment, and every three to five years onc...

  Bee Balm What’s Blooming:   Plans for a Wildflower Garden by Sherry Fuller, Horticulturist and Curator, Gardens on Spring Creek   Wildflowers are popular now for good reason: they are often drought tolerant, easy to maintain and provide food and habitat for our native birds and insects. In this article, I’m using the term wildflower loosely to mean herbaceous native plants with showy flowers. Here are a few things to consider when planning to grow your own wildflower garden from seed. Choose a location:  Most showy wildflowers native to our area prefer at least six or seven hours of sun a day.  They won’t thrive directly under a large tree or on the north side of a building in the shade.  And while most are quite drought tolerant, they will still need water to get established. An area irrigated with a lawn system will usually work to get plants started but will ultimately be too much water for native plants. An area accessible with a hose would be ...