The Gardens on Spring Creek

What's Blooming:  An Abundance of Annuals By Andrew Scott, Horticulturist The summer concert series at the Gardens on Spring Creek is in full swing as legendary performers like WAR, Ricky Skaggs, and Blood, Sweat & Tears still plan on taking the stage, and what a unique stage it is! There are plenty of iconic venues that we love in northern Colorado... but few of these let performers do their thing surrounded by a lively pallet of specially curated plants. Unlike a lot of music venues, the Everitt Pavilion allows you to admire a diverse selection of perennial shrubs, forbs, grasses, and succulents, as well as rotating seasonal annual displays in the open air while basking in the dog days of summer, jamming to some rockin’ tunes. This year’s annual display was designed by horticulturist and propagator Kelly Kellow and follows a general theme of popping pinks and purples with accents of lime green and white. Time tested classics mingle with more modern stunners to make a wonderfu...

What's Blooming: A New Garden! By Andrew Scott, Horticulturist We have a new garden being developed at the Gardens on Spring Creek! Since the expansion in 2018, there has been an unused plot nestled between the Prairie and Undaunted Gardens and the community garden beside the parking lot. For years, it’s merely been an empty mulched area where antsy volunteers could weed mallow and bindweed if they finished their original task early, but in collaboration with Colorado State University, the space is on its way to being a pretty and purposefully curated garden. As you can imagine a lot of time and effort goes into bringing a new garden to life. The process began last October when CSU’s Professor Zach Johnson approached Michelle Provaznik, Garden’s Director, and Dillon Hancock, Operations and Horticulture Supervisor, about a potential opportunity for his students to get some hands-on, real-world experience with landscape design. A couple underutilized spaces were selected as redesign ...

What's Blooming:  Cactus Garden by Lauren Springer, Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek   An unusual planting at the Gardens is wowing visitors and attracting a myriad native bees and other pollinators. To see what the buzz is about, and perhaps fall in love with some intriguing plants that broaden horizons for gardening in Northern Colorado, head to the Cactus Garden on the south side of the Undaunted Garden. In this relatively small, sloped space, traversed by a casual gravel path and graced by a large pergola for shaded seating and viewing from its north side, several hundred winter-hardy cacti are making themselves at home. The planting is one of the largest public outdoor collections of cacti hardy to USDA Zone 5 in the world. Unique in its attention to design, this specialty garden blends regionally resonant rockwork and companion plants with the striking and prickly cacti stars in thoughtfully artistic ways that also benefit the cacti horticulturally. When I...

What's Blooming:  Spring Plant Sale Preview Don't miss the plants our horticulture team is most excited to be growing! VEGETABLES Community Garden Program Outreach Coordinator Mary Miller is quite passionate about the favorite peppers she grows year upon year – this selection ranges from sweet (not spicy) to medium heat to medium hot.   ‘Jimmy Nardello’ Sweet Italian Frying Pepper boasts a dedicated following among gardeners, farmers and cooks.   Guiseppe and Angella Nardiello who immigrated from southern Italy to Connecticut in the 1880’s, brought with them seeds saved from their favorite garden vegetables.   Jimmy was the child who followed in his mother’s love of gardening, creating terraced gardens in which to plant the seeds his parents had brought from Italy.   What became known as Jimmy Nardello pepper was his favorite.   Each year he saved seeds from what he grew and continued to grow them until he passed away in 1983.   Prior to that he...

  Mason bee carrying mud to nest.  Photo from crownbees.com What’s Buzzing:   Mason Bees by Lydia McCracken, Propagation Intern, Gardens on Spring Creek To gardeners, the first welcome signs of spring might come from the blooms of crocus or grape hyacinth.   But for these plants, one the most welcome signs come from the unsung heroes of spring – mason bees.  Tucked away over winter in their mud and clay nests they were eating, growing, resting for the early work that must be done. As daily temperatures reach 55 degrees, this hero is springing into action and has already been spotted at the Gardens on Spring Creek!  Mason bee entering cavity nest to unload pollen. Sealed cavities are complete nests with multiple brood cells. Mason bees are a non-aggressive solitary bee belonging to the genus Osmia . They get their name from the masonry work they use building their unique nests. Although their appearance varies from species to species, they are often a m...

  What’s Blooming:   Bamboo! by Kolt Herkstroeter, Gardener, Gardens on Spring Creek Winter in Colorado can often be overlooked horticulturally, with a vast array of plants going into dormancy, patiently waiting for the hospitable conditions of spring. Many people look to coniferous plants   to help fill the void of green during these cold, lackluster months. Among a celebration of pines, spruces, junipers and firs, a surprising guest has shown up on the scene. Rarely seen and not from around these parts, bamboo is often used as an indoor plant.   However, it does have horticultural significance in the cold, windy winters of Colorado, and it is here to party. For most Colorado natives such as myself, bamboo is an exotic plant that is infrequently talked about or used in our neck of the woods. For others coming from warmer and wetter eastern areas of the United States, bamboo is typically seen as a tree (even though it’s a grass), weed, privacy screen or just ano...

  Honeybee enjoys the flower of a spearmint plant in the Friendship Growing Garden What’s Blooming:    Friendship Growing Garden by Jessica Clarke, Horticulturist, Gardens on Spring Creek   If you have wandered through the Children’s Garden and made your way into the Friendship Growing Garden, you may have noticed that there are still flowers in our food beds. Most of the blooms are growing on perennial herbs such as Mentha spicata (spearmint), Mentha x piperita (chocolate mint), and annuals, like Tropaeolum (nasturtium) and varieties of marigolds such as Tagetes erecta (Mexican marigold). The purpose for leaving the flowers on the plants is to provide highly necessary food sources to sustain our pollinators into winter. Many pollinators, such as bees, butterflies and others, need nectar and pollen as a food reserve for the winter months.   For example, the original queens of a bumblebee hive will die off, and new queens will emerge late summer / fall. In...