Last June, I was privileged to visit several gardens in the Denver area owned by horticultural professionals with connections to the city’s wonderful Denver Botanic Gardens. Home gardeners in the area know former Director of Horticulture Rob Proctor from his longstanding appearances on television, but he and partner David Macke have a stunning garden filled with colour, billowing borders and myriad beautiful seating areas. I wrote about their garden here. Plant collectors and alpine enthusiasts around the globe know Panayoti Kelaidis, Senior Curator and Director of Outreach for the DBG. I blogged here about the fabulous hillside garden he shares with his partner Jan Fas. Today I’m going to introduce you to the charming, plant-rich garden of DBG Curator of Native Plants and Associate Director of Horticulture Dan Johnson and his partner Tony Miles in Englewood. Let’s get off the bus and check out the heavenly “hell strip”, that bit of civic real estate formerly known as “the boulevard”. You don’t even have to go into the garden to understand that the homeowners here have some serious horticultural chops. I see penstemons, alliums, foxtail lily, columbines and so much more.
Looking the other way, there are California poppies and bearded irises… even a little pink rose!
A magenta pool of delosperma meanders through the sedum and alliums. In the background are white prickly poppies (Argemone sp).
I love a garden that bestows a gift on the street, and Dan and Tony’s garden has a spirit of ebullient generosity that makes their neighbourhood a joyous place. Verbascums, irises, alliums and opium poppies….
…..occupy a niche garden against a pretty stucco wall along the city sidewalk.
Here’s the adobe-flavoured front porch! It’s as if every cool garden accessory shop in the southwest decided to open a pop-up store here at this house in suburban Denver.
Let’s amble past the tall, blue ceramic pot with its palm, standing in its own boxwood-hedged corner….
…. and climb the steps so we can get a better look at the slumbering Medusa with her euphorbia dreadlocks and try to count all the pots on the ground and hanging from hooks….
….. containing specimens of cacti…. Hmmm, I’ve lost count. So let’s just enjoy the view and the sound of the wind-chimes and all the splashes of colour…..
…. and fine workmanship that turns a few plant hangers into a work of art.
When I visit a complex garden like this, I often wonder how much time the owners actually take to sit down and enjoy a meal or glass of wine, but this is a lovely spot…..
….. with the splash of the fountain in the container water garden nearby.
Let’s explore the front garden a little, with its mix of perennials in the shade of a big conifer…..
……and its birdhouse-toting elephants.
Our time here is so limited and we need to see the back of the garden, which is just beyond this cool arch and gate.
The back of the house is more about getting right into the garden….
…. past the corn poppies (Papaver rhoeas)….
…. and the potted agave…..
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…. with the yuccas nearby.
What an interesting journey awaits, and we can go in a few directions. Let’s head towards the purple shed way in the back left corner.
I love this combination of foxtail lily (Eremurus) and perfectly coordinated horned poppy (probably Glaucium corniculatum, though these Denver gardeners grow some interesting glauciums).
There are several water features, big and small, in the garden. This ever-pouring bottle emptying into a shell full of marbles is so simple and lovely.
There are little points of interest on the way, like this lovely bearded iris with spiral wire sculpures….
…. that perfectly echo the airy star-of-Persia alliums (Allium cristophii).
I like this carved panel, tucked into the fence and adorned with honeysuckle.
A little further along the path, we pass a drift of orange California poppies (Eschscholzia californica) and penstemons. Note the urn water feature at the left, spilling into the small pond, which in turn spills into the larger pond below.
We come finally to the larger koi pond and its iron sculpture.
The shed walls feature artfully-screened mirrors that reflect light and the leafy garden (and some tired bloggers relaxing and enjoying the view).
There are also some very cool tentacled pots filled with succulents adorning the wall.
On the other side of the garden from the pond are beds filled with June irises, poppies and alliums and more interesting sculptures….
…. including a glass globe artfully displayed on a cool sculptural column.
One of the sad realities of a garden tour is that the day is very tightly scheduled with lots of wonderful stops along the way. If I’d had the time, I would have made my way back to Dan and Tony’s garden in better light (and with fewer of my fellow bloggers in the garden), as I did with Rob Proctor and David Macke’s garden. I feel as if I only absorbed half of what these artists have done in this colourful paradise in Englewood. But it’s time to head back to the bus, past this little shady corner filled with textural foliage plants and another sculpture.
As I walk under a conifer, I catch a flash of movement above. Looking up, I see a little wren having its lunch on the boughs.
It seems that humans aren’t the only visitors that appreciate what this lovely Colorado garden has to offer.
What a treat I had back in June, along with more than 70 other garden bloggers during our annual “Garden Bloggers’ Fling”, to visit the beautiful garden of Rob Proctor and David Macke in the Highlands district of northwest Denver – and then to visit it again in softer light, the following morning! So in the midst of a very busy summer up here on Lake Muskoka (during which I’ve scarcely had a moment to revisit my photos) I nevertheless wanted to share images from my visit. If you arrive in June, this is what greets you even before you open the charming front gate.
In front of the house is a “hellstrip” from heaven, below, filled with a drought-tolerant symphony of plants in purples and soft yellows. It’s your first clue that the plantings here have been designed by a master colourist who is also a painter and botanical illustrator. Rob now appears on Denver’s 9NEWS twice weekly as a garden expert, but at one time he was co-director with Angela Overy of the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Botanical Illustration. He also served as the DBG’s Director of Horticulture from 1998 to 2003. As his friend and former colleague, DBG Senior Curator and Director of Outreach Panayoti Kelaidis said in an interview once: “He transformed a sleepy, provincial research garden facility and made us one of the great display gardens in America.”
Bloody cranesbill (Geranium sanguineum) creates soft cushions of magenta blossoms in front of lavender-blue meadow sage (Salvia pratensis), middle left. At middle right is purple woodland sage (Salvia nemorosa).
Bees were everywhere, including this honey bee nectaring on the woodland sage.
Two unusual xeric plants are lilac-purple Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana) and golden drop (Onosma taurica), below.
At the eastern end of the hellstrip, a brighter colour scheme featured….
….. apricot desert mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with basket-of-gold (Aurinia saxatilis).
A metallic green sweat bee (Agapostemon virescens) was nectaring on the desert mallow, while….
….. nearby, showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa) was awaiting monarch butterflies.
The word “hellstrip” is usually attributed to Colorado garden designer Lauren Springer Ogden, author of the acclaimed book The Undaunted Garden, among others. She and Rob also co-authored Passionate Gardening: Good Advice for Challenging Climates. In an article she wrote for Horticulture magazine back in 2007, Ogden wrote of the Water Smart Garden she designed for Denver Botanic Gardens, shown in my photo below: “The Denver Botanic Gardens’ former director of horticulture, Rob Proctor, played a crucial role in developing the full potential of the garden. The first couple of years it floundered—a good number of the called-for plants were not actually put in, and it fell under poorly trained and often careless maintenance. When Rob took over, he made it his priority to support the richness of the planting and the high level of care the garden deserved. He let me shop personally for many of the missing plants and add the beginnings of a collection of fiber plants that now brings so much to the dynamic year-round textures of the garden: nolinas, yuccas, agaves, and dasylirions—plants that just a few years ago were rarely used in Colorado gardens and often thought not to be hardy.”
Though I could have spent an hour exploring the luscious hellstrip, I was ready to find what waited on the other side of the gate in the ebullient gardens that surround the 1905 “Denver square” brick house that Rob and David moved into in May 1993.
I was invited in to look at some of Rob’s art. I loved this botanical rendering of a passionflower, one of many of his works hanging in the house.
But I was anxious to see what was out back, so I made my way past Stranger, the stray cat that hung around Rob and David’s garden for such a long time that he first got the nickname, then his new home.
Though Stranger elected to stay behind on the sunroom table, Mouse accompanied me out onto the brick-paved patio.
And what a patio it is, nestled into its own little garden spangled with lilac-purple Allium cristophii. Here we see the first wave of hundreds of containers that Rob and David fill with annuals each season, adding to pots containing tropicals, bulbs, succulents or perennials. Pots with tender plants are lifted outdoors each spring, nurtured and watered all summer, then transported back to the basement in autumn before Denver’s Zone 5 winter winds blow. Cobalt blue – a favourite colour – is the unifying hue here.
Teak benches and comfy cushions abound here and throughout the garden.
Tropical foliage plants mix with colourful annuals and succulents like Sedum rupestre ‘Angelina’ pair with potted lilies. Incidentally, Rob is an expert in bulbs in pots, having written The Oudoor Potted Bulb: New Approaches to Container Gardening with Flowering Bulbs way back in 1993, the year they moved here. It’s one of sixteen books he has authored or co-authored.
Though their property is more than a half-acre with several discrete garden areas, the patio is a lovely intimate extension of the house.
When I visited the first time, Rob, left, in his trademark vest and David, a retired geologist, right, held court out here.
I was impressed that David was able to reach out and pick a succulent pea….
….. from a pot of dwarf ‘Tom Thumb’ peas on the coffee table.
However on my second visit, it was just Mouse and me.
I enjoyed the sound of water from the raised goldfish pond….
….. and the splash of water from a unique watering can fountain set among pots on the stairs to the house.
But I was anxious to head out to explore the garden. When Rob and David moved in 26 years ago, the first thing they did was cut down eight “half-dead Siberian elms”. Said Rob in a 1995 article for American Horticulturist, he wanted to build perennial borders. “Because of the relatively formal look of the late Victorian Italianate house, I chose a strong, geometric layout of long borders. Occasional half circles soften the straight lines. Within this framework, I indulge in the controlled chaos that we associate with traditional herbaceous borders.” He carved out two rectangular beds each measuring 16 x 60 feet (4.9 x 18 metres) with an 8-foot wide strip of lawn in between. He then designed a backdrop of 12 brick columns – six per bed – connected by lattice screening and had a mason erect them on deep concrete footings. That resulted in four 8 x 60 foot perennial beds, two of which are visible below. At the far end on the property’s south boundary line is the gazebo, built atop an old carriage house and featuring a winding staircase to the flat roof and a shady dining area within. “Climbing the staircase,” wrote Rob, “it’s possible to view much of the garden from above.”
Mouse followed me dutifully out into the garden.
The colours here in June were exquisite, with purple and blue catmints, campanulas, cranesbills, meadowrues, salvias and veronicas enlivened by brilliant chartreuse. “Borders are like paintings,” said Rob. “Each one starts as a blank canvas. Working with a palette of plants, rather than paints, the possible combinations are limitless. The twin borders that cut through the middle of the garden contain the colors that I naturally gravitate towards – the blues, purples, and pinks.”
Each border held dozens of ideas for combinations. When I visited on June 17th, star-of-Persia onion (Allium cristophii) looked perfect with Kashmir sage (Phlomis cashmeriana)…..
….. and softened the flowers of broad-petaled cranesbill (Geranium platypetalum).
By the way, if you ever want to go down into a taxonomic rabbit hole, take a look at my blog on Allium cristophii.
The bold foliage of American cow parsnip (Heracleum maximum), below, offers a strong contrast to the soft colours and shapes of the central border. Later in summer, the white flower umbels reach up to 8 feet (2.5 metres). In one of the 2018 video clips from 9NEWS, Rob gives some pithy advice on how to handle this phototoxic native – just don’t! Clambering over the lattice in the back of this photo is golden hops (Humulus lupulus ‘Aureus’), one of a number of vines that Rob encourages for its lovely effect. As he wrote: “The golden hops vine needs little encouragement to thread through five or six feet of pink and blue flowers in this border, providing fresh, almost springlike foliage even in midsummer.”
Rob has used the red-leaved rose Rosa glauca as a background feature in one border, less for its single June flowers than for its strong foliage accent in order to enhance the massive beauty bush flowering in the background.
This was the view north along the twin central borders back to the house.
The third long border to the east featured white roses and the tall spires of Verbascum bombyciferum ‘Arctic Summer’….
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…… nestled in a snowy cloud of sea kale (Crambe cordifolia).
The fourth long border on the west side is a confection of pinks and burgundies – peonies, roses and cranesbills in June. As it turns west near the immense beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis), Rob gave special consideration to the unique colouration. “The beauty bush, its pale pink blossoms tinged with coral, inspired the color scheme of the surrounding plantings as the border turns to the west”. For the garden nearby, he chose sunset colours in lilies, red valerian, red sunroses, salmon pink nicotine and coral bells mixed with chartreuse and bronze foliage, to name a few.
In fact, he captured all three tints of beauty bush flowers in the cushions on the chairs placed strategically under its flowery boughs. This is colour perfectionism! Because of its size, Rob estimates the shrub was planted fairly soon after it was introduced to the west via Ernest “China” Wilson, who sent seed to Veitch’s Nursery in England in 1901. Flowers did not appear on the first seedlings for nine more years. It became very popular in gardens in the mid-20th century but deserves to be planted in gardens where its size can be contained.
This view melted my heart. And there were bees in that pink rose… scroll down to the video at the end of my blog and you’ll see them.
Clematis recta is a superb June-blooming herbaceous clematis. I’m not sure how Rob manages to keep his upright, but it does benefit from some kind of support, like a peony ring.
Further along, near the nuts-and-bolts of the garden (compost bins, potting shed, etc.) I noted one of Rob’s favourite strategies to introduce a splash of colour into the borders: a well-positioned pot with a bright red annual coleus. He does the same thing with red orach (Atriplex hotensis ‘Rubra’). Later there will be larkspur here.
We’ve arrived at the back where the gazebo is sited on the foundation of an old carriage house. A spiral staircase climbs to the top; it must be a lovely spot to sip a glass of wine and look back on the borders.
Down below, there was a table and chairs under the roof, providing a nice view and much needed shade in Denver’s notoriously hot summers.
Luscious tuberous begonias thrive here.
What a great spot for al fresco dinners – surrounded by tropicals and foliage plants. I loved the louvered panels at the back. And what do you suppose lies behind that dark picket fence?
Well, it’s an alley. A place where most gardeners would be content to create a couple of parking spots and leave it at that. But not David and Rob…. all that sunshine! So they not only reserved places to park their cars, but….
… also designed a potager divided into eight Native-American-inspired “waffle” beds, which are dug down below grade to capture precious rainwater, just as waffles collect syrup.
Bordered in thyme, the beds contain different types of seed-grown vegetables. At the centre of the potager is an artful cluster of pots.
As with every part of Rob and David’s garden, there is a comfy, colour-coordinated place to sit and relax – even in the alley!
Biennial clary sage (Salvia sclarea) is one of many plants allowed to self-seed here.
I loved this succulent-filled strawberry jar in the midst of the vegetables.
I headed back into the garden and made my way down the east side, where an old driveway has been re-imagined as the “gravel allée”. It’s a series of tableaux: sitting areas with colour-matched accessories and plants. Periwinkle blue and rusty-orange… sigh. You can imagine how enchanting this is for someone who called her blog “thepaintboxgarden”!
Such an inviting scene……
Double clematis are often less hardy than small-flowered species and varieties, so Rob pots them up and takes them to a less exposed area for winter.
Under the mature trees here was another semi-shaded sitting area set in amongst shrub roses with yet another bench. I loved the row of potted aloes!
Now I was gazing at the house through a delightful thyme parterre herb garden.
I walked around to the south to see the view….
…. and then from the corner nearest the house. This is such a classic design – also created in the lowered waffle bed manner – and so lovely when the thyme…..
…. and the rose are in flower together.
I had a plane to catch later that afternoon, so gathered up my things and headed around the house to the front. There on the west side under the shade of the trees was one final treasure in Rob and David’s garden. It was a patio filled with shade-loving plants adjoining their sunken garden (down the stairs and just out of the photo below). As Rob wrote in 1995: “One weekend, while digging up self-sown tree-of-heaven saplings, we kept hitting brick. We determined that it was the foundation to a building, about 15 by 10 feet. Friends joined us for some urban archeology as we excavated it, finding hundreds of patent medicine bottles, broken china, and a waffle iron designed for the top of a wood stove. The foundation may have supported a summer kitchen or an earlier house, perhaps a farmer’s. We stopped digging at about four feet and, exhausted, decided our sunken garden was deep enough. We mixed in extra-rich compost to nurture the shade-lovers we intended to plant there.”
It was so hot that day in June, I would have loved to settle in the shade on those blue and red cushions and contemplate the lovely caladium. But it was time to go.
So, reluctantly, out I went through the gate entwined with Virginia creeper, to meet my ride.
As a bonus, I created a little musical tour through David and Rob’s enchanting garden, co-starring a selection of the bees that find nectar there:
Rob and David have shared their garden annually for many years now. It’s for a cause near and dear to them – and to Stranger and Mouse, too. And I’m so glad I was able to share their garden with you, too.
If you’re invited to visit Quince Garden in Denver, Colorado, you could always start your tour along the walkway to the front door. All those tiny plants embracing the risers of the stone steps will delight you….
… and no doubt you’ll admire the well-grown annuals: the ‘Mystic Spires’ salvia, and the blackeyed susan vines (Thunbergia alata) in pots at the front door.
You’ll be intrigued by the planters and troughs lining the walkway, filled with dozens of plants whose identities you can’t begin to guess at.
Your appetite whetted, you’ll surely be tempted to meander down the path of the hillside skirting the house, as we did in June during my Garden Bloggers’ Fling, on our visit to the home and garden of Denver Botanic Garden’s inimitable Senior Curator and Director of Outreach, Panayoti Kelaidis (aka “PK” to his friends.) Over his 30+ years at the garden, he designed the plantings for the amazing Rock Alpine Garden and helped with the design and implementation of Wildflower Treasures, the South African Plaza and the Romantic Gardens, among others. He is also the recipient of the Award of Excellence from National Garden Clubs and the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award, the highest award from the American Horticultural Society.
Apart from travelling the world collecting and viewing rare plants, as he is doing this very moment in the Tibetan Himalayas, he writes a plant-rich blog called Prairiebreak (currently featuring rare meconopsis species from said trip). He also lectures everywhere (in more than 70 cities so far) mostly on plants that grow in the alpine regions and steppes of the world. Wikipedia defines a steppe as follows: “In physical geography, steppe (Russian: степь, IPA: [stʲepʲ]) is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes. The prairie of North America (especially the shortgrass and mixed prairie) is an example of a steppe, though it is not usually called such. A steppe may be semi-arid or covered with grass or shrubs or both, depending on the season and latitude.” So passionate is Panayoti about this topic that he recently co-authored a book called Steppes: The Plants and Ecology of the World’s Semi-Arid Regions, along with Michael Bone, Mike Kintgen, Dan Johnson and Larry Vickerman.
We wandered down the hill past the silvery yuccas…….
….. and the statuesque Scotch thistle (Onopordum acanthium). We could see rain and the odd fork of lightning in the distance, but not one drop fell on the garden.
Flanking the path were little planters filled with cacti and succulents. And there were sentry-like spires of giant silver mullein (Verbascum bombyciferum). Panayoti particularly likes this mullein, and has written with his usual wit about finding it growing on Turkey’s Uludağ.
Look at this! So darling. But the gardener knows the provenance of each of those little treasures.
In the hottest, unirrigated part of PK’s hillside, cacti were in flower, like this pink prickly-pear (Opuntia sp.)
Here it is with Onosma taurica, a European plant – clearly drought-tolerant – that I saw in a few spots in the Denver area.
More giant silver mulleins, and a place to sit and relax as well.
Panayoti’s garden seemed to be a happy marriage of plant-collecting on a refined scale and Gertrude Jekyllesque cottage-gardening.
Desert species were at home among plants with similar cultural needs from the world over.
I loved these table-top displays of special cacti from PK’s 300+ collection.
Brilliant pink desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis) added a rosy note to the various cactus species.
Desert penstemon is just one of many native penstemons I coveted on my visits to gardens in Denver, as I wrote in a previous blog. Check out that lovely pea gravel.
Where the soil was a little richer, there was amsonia.
Salvias, too.
Altai onion (Allium altaicum) was in flower, front. Behind were plant stands filled with a pretty collection of cacti and succulents. (Not sure what was happening behind the mesh screen.)
After visiting the botanical garden at Würzburg, Germany in 2016, Panayoti swore he would have his own Asphodeline taurica…. and here it was, looking very fetching with orange rock roses bringing up the rear.
Near the bottom of the hill, there was a starry cloud of crambe and a brilliant yellow mullein (Verbascum olympicum, I’m guessing.)
Everywhere in the cottage garden at the bottom of Panayoti’s hill, brilliant orange horned poppies (originallyGlaucium grandiflorum x flavum hybrids) flung themselves around with abandon. As a lover of colour, I particularly admired this hot pairing of the poppies with a fuchsia-pink rose, cooled ever so slightly by cobalt blue Veronica austriaca.
Amidst all the self-seeding wonderfulness, there were more of the collector’s curio cabinets, this vignette backed by a luscious purple smoke bush.
After a little swing back up the hill towards the rear of the house, all the eclectic xeriscape lollapalooza suddenly became very refined, with a luscious, traditional June border filled with meadow cranesbills, red valerian (Centranthus ruber), pink gas plant (Dictamnus albus var. purpureus), roses and a white-flowered fringe tree (Chionanthus) and dark-leafed ninebark (Physocarpus) in the rear.
This rosy, romantic June confection proved a lovely backdrop….
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And this is Jan’s iris, ‘Afternoon Delight’.
At the back of the house, an alpine garden wall rises from a patio filled with pots of plants and two chairs. Because, of course, there would be lots of time to sit and relax in a garden this easy to care for…….
A sunken pool features yellow flag iris (I. pseudacorus) backed by that beautiful wall….
…. in whose crevices and niches choice alpines thrive.
The brilliant hues of South African ice plants (Delosperma, formerly Mesymbranthemum) brighten up the rocks.
This is Delosperma Fire Spinner®, one of the best plants to come out of the Plant Select® program that Panayoti helped launch through Denver Botanic Gardens.
You can hear Panayoti talk about the ice plants in the Plant Select program here.
I loved the artful way the plants combined with each other in the garden…..
…. though clearly there was careful forethought even in the little informal vignette of Aethionema and Helianthemum nummularium, below, one of thousands and thousands here.
Even though much of Panayoti’s garden bakes in sunshine, there is a shady corner, too. Here there was goatsbeard (Aruncus dioicus), heucheras and ferns…..
…. and a shimmering white martagon lily (L. martagon f. album).
Back in the sunshine, sage mixed with centaureas and Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) graced a pot. Unlike many ‘collector’s gardens’, Panayoti loves all plants, common and rare.
A dish of succulents rested in a bed of thyme…..
….. and a white umbellifer (I won’t try a name) consorted with an echium.
Digitalis thapsi looked demure in this setting.
Alas, it was time to return to our tour, and I found my way back to the cottage garden, where larkspur (Consolida ajacis) was in bloom.
Annual white lace flower (Orlaya grandiflora) made a pretty partner to herbaceous Clematis integrifolia.
White lace flower hails from the Mediterranean and is increasingly popular in North American gardens.
When I first started gardening seriously in the 1970s, I cut out photos of English cottage gardens with beautiful flowers falling over each other in an artful tumble.
I was reminded of those first inspirations on Panayoti’s sunny hillside, where cottage gardening mixes with decades of plant collecting and a fondness for containers. That slender red-leaved plant contrasting so nicely with the horned poppies is red orach (Atriplex hortensis ‘Rubra’).
As PK wrote of it fondly in one of his blogs: “Perhaps that explains my love of marginal weeds, those I can more or less manage. Isn’t it better to have Atriplex hortensisin its furious red manifestation, or red amaranth or Clary sage rampaging on the fringes of your garden. or Verbascums of the bombyciferum persuasion. These suck up space, and self sow, but you can eliminate them. And they give the crabgrasses a run for their money.”
Then it was time to climb the path past the mulleins and head back to the bus. But first, a photo keepsake in front of that gloriously gaudy poppy-rose combination.
And a personal note of thanks to finish up. Thirteen years ago, I visited the Denver Botanic Gardens with my husband and innocently told the young lady at the front desk that I planned to photograph there. Before I could add that I was a garden writer and photographer, she said: “That will be $200 for the photography permit.” I sputtered a little and tried to correct the situation, adding I wasn’t a wedding photographer, but someone who planned to write about the plants and publicize the garden itself. When that didn’t work, I dredged up a name I’d heard or read about and asked: “Is Mr. Kelaidis here?” She phoned his extension and he appeared moments later, waved us in with a flourish, and gave us a private 90-minute walking tour, waxing poetic about the garden and its employees at each and every turn. What an introduction to DBG and its charms! Twelve years later, Panayoti was horticultural guide on an American Horticultural Society tour of New Zealand in which we participated. So I saw a lot of PK over those three weeks and enjoyed watching him thank all our garden hosts profusely, choosing just the right words each time to acknowledge the unique features of their gardens and make them feel special. For example, this was a little thank you he made to owners John and Jo Gow at Connells Bay Sculpture Park on Waiheke Island, near Auckland. (I blogged about this amazing garden last year.)
I followed him with other intrepid botanizers (and my dear, patient husband) up Ben Lomond overlooking Queenstown, where he pointed out tiny dracophyllums and raoullias.
So it was a distinct pleasure to greet Panayoti and Jan in this amazing garden, and to discover that, despite all those weeks of travel climbing mountains in Tibet, Turkey, South Africa, Kazakhstan, New Zealand and dozens of other plant-rich places in the world, there is still time for the gardener to be at home surrounded by the plants that give him and all of us such deep pleasure and pride.
I’ve just returned home from Denver (and the annual edition of my Garden Bloggers’ Fling) with a severe case of ineedmore. There’s not really a cure for this, except to acknowledge that “I need more penstemons” is a real affliction, especially in June. Especially after being in Colorado, where so many penstemons are native. I felt it stirring at the High Plains Environmental Center in Fort Collins, where red-flowered scarlet bugler (P. barbatus) was consorting wtih purplish Rocky Mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus) and native yellow columbines (Aquilegia chrysantha).
Pretty sure I saw gorgeous, pink Palmer’s penstemon (P. palmeri) at the doorway to the visitor centre there. I tried to grow that one from seed, but no dice.
I have a photo specialty of bumble bee (Bombus) images, and I was happy to collect a new species, Bombus nevadensis, the Nevada bumble bee, nectaring on Penstemon strictus at the High Plains Environmental Center.
Denver Botanic Garden‘s new Steppe Garden featured penstemons galore. I loved this little meadow with large-flowered penstemon (P. grandiflorus) in various colours.
This was an interesting combination at Denver Botanic: Penstemon grandiflorus in a bed of Fire Spinner ice plant (Delosperma cooperi).
I do grow P. grandiflorus at my cottage on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. A biennial, it makes a rosette of succulent, silvery-gray leaves the first year, then sends up this sturdy stem with gorgeous lilac-purple blooms the next year. It’s easy to grow from seed. This is what it looked like the first year I seeded it, up near my septic bed. (And yes, it is growing with the pernicious, invasive, lovable oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare…)
If I watch this penstemon carefully , I’ll see lots of native bees and hoverflies exploring the lilac-mauve flowers.
Desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis) was in flower at Denver Botanic Gardens, too.
We would see that pretty penstemon at The Gardens on Spring Creek in Fort Collins, this time with a pink dianthus.
There were other penstemons at this developing garden. This sky-blue one had no label, but horticulturist Bryan Fischer is quite sure it’s Penstemon virgatus, the upright blue penstemon or one-sided penstemon.
Well-known designer/writer Lauren Springer Ogden is creating The Undaunted Garden (named after her iconic book) at The Gardens on Spring Creek. One of the plants she’s used is the stunning Penstemon heterophyllus ‘Electric Blue’, below.
Rocky mountain penstemon (Penstemon strictus), of course, is a common native beardtongue in Denver. This is P. strictus ‘Bandera’ at Denver Botanic Gardens.
At Denver Botanic Garden’s Chatfield Farm campus (where we enjoyed a buffet dinner and line-dancing lessons!) we saw Penstemon strictus growing with scarlet bugler (Penstemon barbatus ‘Coccineus’) and a bearded iris thrown in the mix.
And Penstemon strictus made a beautiful purple foil to native yellow blanket flowers (Gaillardia aristata) at Chatfield.
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This was an effective colour combination there: apricot mallow (Sphaeralcea ambigua) with Penstemon strictus.
Banana yucca (Yucca baccata) made a brilliant focal point in a sea of Penstemon strictus at Chatfield, below.
In Carol Shinn’s beautiful Fort Collin’s garden, I admired purple P. strictus and scarlet bugler (P. barbatus ‘Coccineus’) in a gritty bed beside her driveway. They were flowering with a native white erigeron, yellow eriogonum and tall yellow prince’s plume (Stanleya pinnata) in the background.
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Dan Johnson and Tony Miles’s lovely garden in Englewood, Pentemon strictus was consorting happily beside a little water feature with California poppies.
At radio personality Keith Funk’s garden in Centennial, below, a front yard alpine garden paired the compact red flowers of pineleaf penstemon (P. pinifolius) with yellow foxtail lily (Eremurus), right, and evening primrose (Oenothera), rear.
Well-known garden guru Panayoti Kelaidis, outreach director of the Denver Botanic Gardens, had lots of penstemons in his garden. I liked this colourful combination of cacti with desert penstemon (P. pseudospectabilis).
I first met Panayoti in June 2006 when he generously gave my husband and me a 90-minute tour of the botanic garden, of which he was (and is) so deservedly proud. We were on a driving trip from Denver to Edwards CO and we stopped in at DBG and also at the Betty Ford Alpine Garden in Vail. What a delight that little jewel of a garden is, especially for penstemons! So when I came back to Canada, I decided to sow some penstemon seed in my wild, sandy, hillside garden on Lake Muskoka, north of Toronto. As I wrote above, biennial large-flowered penstemon enjoyed the conditions and still comes up here and there. Not all the seeds took, but one luscious species, prairie penstemon (P. cobaea var. purpureus) found happiness with its roots seemingly tucked under rocks and graced me with just two plants that appear faithfully each June.
My most successful seed-sowing, however, was our native foxglove penstemon (P. digitalis), which loves my granite hillside, thrives in sandy, acidic gravel and shrugs off drought. It is a great self-seeder and enjoys the company of lanceleaf coreopsis (C. lanceolata), which likes the same mean conditions. They are always in bloom on Canada Day (July 1st).
Here it is with a foraging bumble bee. Hummingbirds love this penstemon, too (as they do all penstemons).
Penstemons are also called “beardtongue”, for the fuzzy staminode in the centre of the flower. You can see that below with a closeup of foxglove penstemon.
Penstemons flower mostly in June and early July. Depending on the species, they make beautiful garden companions for lots of late spring-early summer perennials: irises, peonies, lupines and more. One June (before the foxglove penstemon came into flower), I made a little bouquet from my country meadows here on Lake Muskoka. Along with the pale-lilac Penstemon grandiflorus I included native blue flag iris (I. versicolor), wild lupines (L. perennis) and weedy oxeye daisies and buttercups. This year our spring was cold and flowering was late, so I’m back at the lake in the first week of summer in time to enjoy all these flowers, and the ones that come later. And to daydream and write about the wonderful gardens we visited in Colorado, where penstemons rule supreme!
If you love penstemons (or if I’ve misidentified any), please leave a comment. I love hearing from you.
