As the weather turns cold, we seek coziness, covering ourselves in layers of clothing, nestling into blankets and if we’re fortunate, taking sanctuary in heated habitations. When it comes to the extreme weather of the steppes, we live by the words of the Rolling Stones: “Gimme shelter or I’m gonna fade away.” These lyrics ring as true for us as they do for the multitude of vertebrate and invertebrate animals and microorganisms that exist in our gardens.</p> Through gardening, we align ourselves intimately with other creatures. These collateral beings are our kin, and we must consider our actions in relation to their health as we create, sustain or destroy garden spaces. The garden is their home, and we must remember that a bare garden is a space bereft of the raw materials of shelter.</p> In his article “Sustainable Fall Garden Clean-up”</a> my colleague Michael Guidi expertly outlined the aesthetic and biological advantages to leaving dead and decaying organic matter in the garden throughout the fall and winter seasons. The basic rules are easy:</p> Don’t cut back your gardens until spring (and if possible, leave some parts completely uncut until the following summer).</li> After cut back, leave organic matter of different sizes and materials in your garden (homes for animals and free mulch).</li> </ul> If you feel like you must cut back or clean up, consider not cutting back everything or leaving piles of the organic matter in your garden or somewhere out of sight in your yard.</p> Although we may feel compelled to clean our gardens, we must transmute our vision of a prepared space from one that is ready to fulfill our short-term needs (the promise of easy planting and harvesting in an organized space) to one that serves our long-term needs (a healthy biosphere that will support our gardens and crops for decades to come).</p> As you walk through Denver Botanic Gardens in the autumn, notice that while some spaces are thoroughly cleaned, much of the Gardens is left full of plant material through the winter months. These spaces, with their senesced skeletal forms and earthly hued layers of detritus are left intentionally to serve as spots of biological generation:</p> Josephine Streetscape:</strong> The Josephine Streetscape (both the east and west sides) is a dense mixture of shrubs, grasses, trees and perennials that aren’t cut back until very early spring. When it is cut back, the plants are cut roughly and dropped directly on the ground, creating the mulch for the garden and leaving lots of layers and hollows for life to find shelter in.</li> Ponderosa and Bristlecone Borders:</strong> The Ponderosa and Bristlecone borders are naturalistic gardens that reflect different plant communities of Colorado’s montane ecosystems. These gardens provide a depth and complexity that is helpful for wildlife to feel safe and nestled in.</li> Oak Steppe and Shrub Steppe: </strong>The interstitial spaces of the Gardens are important to support life since they often contain heterogeneous mixes of lots of different plant forms. The oak steppe and shrub steppe beds of the Steppe Garden are liminal areas, at the edges of the main garden. They are left full of fallen leaves and detritus giving animals an out-of-the-way home.</li> The Lilac Garden: </strong>The Lilac Garden has a thick and wild understory that is left full of stems of different sizes, heights and states of decay and grasses and seed heads that are crucial for use as nesting materials.</li> The Laura Smith Porter Plains Garden: </strong>The shrubs and grasses of the Plains Garden are left to grow, collapse on themselves and grow through their own detritus for several seasons at a time creating a complex matrix of life and decay and allowing for different cycles of vertebrates and invertebrates to breed and live within.</li> </ul> This short list highlights the winter habitat potential of just a handful of places that you can visit and investigate, but areas of refuge continuously thread throughout the Gardens. I hope you enjoy seeing the winter garden with new eyes.</p>
Denver Botanic Gardens’ scientists embarked on their third season of research this summer in partnership with the High Line Canal Conservancy to survey plant communities along the 71-mile trail. I was fortunate to take part in this project through a “near-peer” mentoring program. This program pairs graduate students, like myself, with undergraduates interested in furthering their STEM skillsets. Near-peer mentoring is a type of mentoring that allows mentors to connect with mentees that are of similar professional or social status or age. Graduate student Alissa Iverson and I mentored a fieldwork team of three undergraduates. </p> Our near-peer mentoring project began by getting to know the undergraduates and their career goals. We asked the undergraduates what skills they were hoping to obtain from this experience and how they thought we could best help them. Alissa and I also took this time to introduce ourselves, discuss our backgrounds and career goals. Gardens scientists and CU Denver faculty were brought in to share their stories as well. This type of collaborative discussion was not only a great icebreaker, but an excellent way to show undergraduates that STEM professions don’t always follow a linear path. </p> Our fieldwork started with a training day. Alissa and I led the undergraduates around the Gardens and Cheesman Park to practice identifying some of the tree species found along the canal. Undergraduates were introduced to taking measurements of tree size, tree health and distance to trail and the Canal. We also took this time to designate workflow and how we would perform duties on rotation to maximize learning and hands-on experience. </p> Once on the Canal, micro-decisions had to be made about how to handle deviations from practice expectations. Measurements could not always be completed due to steep drop-offs or vegetative overgrowth. Some trees once planted on banks were now rooted in water. We found that we needed to clarify some of the descriptive observations being recorded such as, “on or above slope.” These are important variables, and properly addressing them was of top priority to ensure data integrity. Although many of our workdays were completed in temperatures higher than 90 degrees, our team consistently recorded data for more than 20 trees per day. </p> Alissa and I met with the fieldwork team again at the end of the summer to review what the team learned and what they felt like was most beneficial from the experience. Going through the motions in the field and rotating duties helped to keep everyone actively learning throughout the process. Making micro-decisions in the field led to training in leadership and quick decision making. These types of experiences are crucial to advancing knowledge in a field that you may have been introduced to, but have not had formal training in. Near-peer was a great opportunity for graduate students and Gardens scientists to convey their love of botany and the preservation of the natural world to future generations. </p> </p> This article was contributed by Tiffany Gentry, graduate student at the Gardens.</em> </p>
I am immensely proud that Denver Botanic Gardens is hosting the 2022 Colorado Pollinator Summit on Wednesday, November 9. Open to the public, the theme is “Scaling Pollinator Conservation for a New Era: Growing, Progressing, Transforming.” And this year it is in person!</p> The Summit features keynote speaker Dr. Stephen Buchmann, co-author of the seminal book “The Forgotten Pollinators.”</a> Dr. Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees, and an adjunct professor with the departments of entomology and of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona. He will speak about the diversity, natural history and importance of native bees.</p> Other speakers, special guests and panel discussions cover topics from balancing honeybee keeping with conserving native species, enacting policies for change, health impacts of native-plants policy and how to grow conservation work through a Pollinator Action Plan. </p> The Summit is in its seventh year and presented by the Colorado Pollinator Network (CPN). CPN consists of Colorado entities that, caring deeply about pollinators, are working together to conserve them. This includes Butterfly Pavilion, City of Boulder, CSU State Extension, CU Museum of Natural History, Denver Audubon, Denver Botanic Gardens and People and Pollinators Action Network. Its focus is to share information about best practices, resources and knowledge to support education initiatives, conservation, restoration and creation of habitats and research on pollinators in the state. The Summit is one vehicle to achieve this.</p> Please join us for this inspiring, educational and thought-provoking event. </p>
The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) team has had a great growing season at Chatfield Farms. As the season winds down, our focus shifts from planting and harvesting vegetables and flowers to field clean up and winter prep. Here are three tips for welcoming late fall and winter to your garden:</p> 1. Clean up!</strong> Remove any irrigation that may freeze and crack over the winter, as well as any plastic or metal you may have used for trellising or covering plants. You don’t want undesirable items disintegrating into your soil and any reusable materials may degrade quickly if left out. </p>
Exposure to nature has a positive impact on overall health, with benefits such as stress reduction, lowering blood pressure, better mood and improved attention. More companies are beginning to incorporate nature into their wellness programs for these benefits. </p> At Denver Botanic Gardens, of course, our mission is to connect people with plants. Why not use some of our offerings to support overall better health with your staff? Host an employee wellness day in one of our venues at Chatfield Farms</a>, just 20 minutes outside of the city. We invite you and your company, or a business you work with, out for a mindful morning, forest bathing or simply an afternoon to reset in the fresh air year-round. You never know what a monthly dose of nature will do for your employees. </p>
As the days shorten and we head into autumn, we start seeing pumpkins everywhere – they are used as decorations on stoops and inside houses; they flavor various culinary specialties from pies and soups to lattes and beer; and let us not forget their importance in the competitive sport of punkin’ chuckin’. But what exactly is a pumpkin? Is it a vegetable? Is it a fruit? Or is it simply a decoration for Halloween?</p> Botanically speaking, a pumpkin is a fruit. And even more specifically, a pumpkin is a type of botanical berry called a pepo. This specialized term is used to describe fruits of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae</em>), which are modified to have a hard outer rind and lots of seeds, such as squashes, cucumber and watermelon. Pepo </em>derives from the Ancient Greek word, pepon</em>, meaning “large melon.” After many derivatives came the word we use today, pumpkin</em>. However, the term pumpkin </em>has no real botanical or scientific meaning, as all pumpkins are technically squash. </p>
