</p> This weekend, gardeners will flock to our annual Fall Plant & Bulb Sale</a>, where scores of spring-blooming bulbs and hardy fall plants will be available for purchase and our horticulturists will offer expert advice on how to grow them. Free admission to the Plant Sale and to the Gardens.</p> This year, you can also sit in on a free lecture by Mike Smedley, a bulbs enthusiast who grows over 10,000 bulbs in his home garden in Durango, CO. A humor columnist for his local paper, Mike has more juicy stories about bulbs than we even knew existed. We asked him to share a few interesting tidbits as a little sneak peek before his lectures this weekend, and here’s what he had to say.</p> What are the differences between a bulb, a rhizome, a tuber and a corm? </em></strong></p> The term “bulb” lumps together “geophytes,” or things that grow in the ground and have stored energy that will be used for next season’s growth. Bulbs are the “Happy Meals” of horticulture because everything is right there ready to go: all you need to do is plant them! That being said, there are some major difference between a bulb, rhizome, tuber or corm.</p> Bulbs</strong> – If you slice open a “bulb” with a knife, you will see layers kind of like an onion. These layers are the leaves that will emerge; meanwhile, in the middle you will find the beginnings of a flower. The bottom of the bulb will have roots. Examples of true bulbs are tulips, daffodils, amaryllis, lilies and garlic.</li> Rhizomes</strong> – Rhizomes are underground stems that are fleshy and not woody. They grow horizontally at ground level and have “eyes” or buds from which growth will emerge. The most well-known are bearded iris and canna lilies.</li> Tubers</strong> – Think of a potato. Tubers have “eyes.” From each eye, a stem will grow. Tubers can be cut into pieces as long as each piece has an eye. The best-known tubers are caladiums and dahlias.</li> Corms</strong> – These look like bulbs, but if you cut them open, you won’t find the onion-like “layers.” The insides will be solid and whitish or cream-colored. Familiar corms include crocus and gladiolas.</li> </ul> How long have humans been cultivating bulbs? Where and when did cultivation begin?</em></strong></p> No one really knows exactly how long people have been growing and fussing over bulbs, but we have a few clues. Saffron (which comes from the three red stigmas found in each crocus bloom) appears in a 7th century BC Assyrian botanical treatise, so we can safely assume crocus cultivation began long before that. The Bible also mentions several geophytes, including iris, garlic and saffron. Meanwhile, the first drawings of lilies found in Crete date back to 1580 BC, and Asiatic lilies are mentioned in writing in Chinese tests from 78-140 AD.</p> There’s a record of the Seljuk Turks growing tulips around 1000 AD in what is now Baghdad, but since they brought those bulbs with them from their homeland on the Central Asian steppes, it is likely they had been raising them for much longer than that. Daffodils, probably the most hybridized bulbs on the planet, are native to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) but have been grown all over the world for thousands of years because of their portability in dormancy. </p> Where are some of the strangest tales of bulbs in our history?</em></strong></p> Western and Eastern mythology and history are rich with references to bulbs. Narcissus, the true name of a daffodil, is the identity of a tragic Greek character who fell in love with his own reflection. Daffodils were also carried by Roman legions to the British Isles, where they have now become a state symbol of Wales, despite the fact that they are not native. The “saffron crocus” is probably a form of a crocus that Bronze Age folks of the Mediterranean harvested so extensively that it eventually became a sterile corm. When Hercules wrestled Cerberus, a vicious three-headed dog who guarded the Underworld, Cerberus foamed at the mouth and wherever he drooled, a winter aconite sprang forth.</p> Perhaps the most sordid tale in bulb history occurred on a cold February day in 1637, when the entire Dutch economy imploded after a commodities bubble burst. What caused this? Tulips. Ordinary citizens became swept up in buying and selling tulip bulbs, with no intention of ever planting them. Tulip futures trading reached ridiculous speculative proportions. One lone tulip bulb was reportedly traded for wheat, rye, four oxen, eight pigs, 12 sheep, two vats of wine, four kegs of beer, two tons of butter, 1,000 pounds of cheese, a bed, some clothes and a silver cup! One day, the trading just stopped and prices utterly collapsed, leaving the last traders with massive debts that couldn’t possibly be paid and a court system so backlogged with breach of contract suits that the judiciary refused to hear anything about tulips. It was all very embarrassing and humiliating. Interestingly, the Dutch are now the leading importers of bulbs, though without the speculative pricing!</p> What are the newest varieties of bulbs?</em></strong></p> New named varieties of bulbs come onto the market each year, primarily from the Big Three – Crocus, Daffodils and Tulips. Each will have some sort of a “new” trait. I’ve noticed that daffodil breeders have a thing of late for pink cups. The Orange Monarch is an exciting new crocus. And the annual parade of new tulips is astonishing. Just when you think the tulip couldn’t be more colorful, along comes a new variety!</p> Want to learn more about the fascinating history of bulbs and buy some bulbs of your own? Stop by the Fall Plant & Bulb Sale this Saturday and Sunday, September 23 and 24, from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. Lectures will take place in the All-America Selections Garden at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. each day. </strong></p>
I feel lucky enough to have grown up amid Tennessee’s lush and rolling hills, and more recently to have lived alongside the Great Smoky Mountains. Unsurprisingly, Steppe regions are not commonly discussed in southern Appalachia. So naturally, I gravitated towards the Steppe Garden, mostly because it was the furthest thing from what I was used to. When I was told I would be working in the Steppe Garden I felt incredibly lucky.</p> This summer I was brought on as the Plant Records Intern; the majority of my efforts were dedicated to documenting and mapping the many fantastic species within the Steppe Garden. I was able to learn more about the plants indigenous to the many Steppe regions of the world. Walking through this garden I saw so many fantastic and unique species, from the wild Lithops</em> in the Living Stones bed to the sweet creeping gold buttons (Cotula)</em> in the South African beds. Although, what I enjoyed most was hearing the history behind the plants, which occasionally involved stories of their retrieval from different countries around the world. The Steppe Garden is such a wonderful representation of so much history and geography. This garden truly is a wonder, and is well worth a visit.</p> Due to the newness of the Steppe Garden, mapping and documentation the plant collection often had its challenges. The process is detailed and rewarding and I was able to work closely with staff members to identify the different specimens within a bed that I needed to record, map and photograph. Through this process I was able to learn a lot about the plants native to these regions.</p> This process may seem tedious, but it not only enhances the Gardens’ internal database, but also improves Gardens Navigator</a>, our public plant database. This is an incredible resource for staff members and visitors alike. Gardens Navigator allows staff to easily locate specific plant material or acquire other information about the plant, regarding bloom time, habit, source, etc. Visitors can use it as a tool to identify the plants they are seeing throughout the Gardens. Here is Gardens Navigator website</a>.</p> While I was able to map and photograph a significant part of the plants in the Steppe Garden during my time as the Plant Records Intern, keeping our database current is an on-going process. As the Gardens continues to evolve, having a capable plant records team becomes increasingly essential. It is not often that people consider this to be an important part of botanic gardens, however, I was able to learn how invaluable they are to a garden of this scale. The Gardens has a wonderful plant records team, and being able to work alongside them was truly fantastic. Being able to hand visitors the tools to learn and explore is such a large part of what the Gardens do, and being able to further sharpen those tools was an excellent way to spend a summer.</p> Chloe Reeves is a senior at the University of Tennessee, majoring in Plant Sciences with a concentration in Public Horticulture. She came to the university from Nashville, Tennessee where she was born and raised. Moving forward, she has hopes to work towards a masters in Landscape Architecture.</em></p>
This year Denver Botanic Gardens is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of its fungal herbarium, the largest collection of Rocky Mountain mushrooms and fleshy fungi in the North American continent. The herbarium is home to more than 18,000 mushrooms, puffballs and other fungi of many varieties and 80% are from Colorado. All this started by the simple passion of Dr. Duane “Sam” Mitchel, the namesake of the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi.</p> In celebration of the herbarium’s anniversary, Vera Evenson, curator of the Sam Mitchel Herbarium, and I decided to pay a visit to Sam’s former Ranch. The home he lived in is just south of Edwards, Colorado, where he made some of his first collections. Many of these now reside in the herbarium that bears his name.</p> With some direction from Sam’s son Kirk Mitchel, I contacted the realtors that sold the ranch and they introduced me to the current owners of the property. With the current owners’ permission, Vera and I took the trip on July 29 to see what we could find.</p> Driving through the valley on the way to Sam’s former Ranch, I could see what enchanted him so much about the area. Overlooked by New York Mountain, and bordered by fir and aspen, the valley was lush and clearly a place where any mushroom enthusiast would enjoy spending time. This is where Sam’s sons approached him with some mushrooms asking him what they were. The question motivated Sam so much that he ended up pursuing answers to the diversity of Colorado fungi for the next 25+ years.</p> While on the property, Vera and I visited what Kirk called “God’s half acre.” This name made sense given that the recent rains created such a lush and damp environment along a tree-lined creek. The place was practically heaven for mushrooms.</p> There was a lovely Pluteus</em>. Wood decaying Stropharia</em> were growing all over the place. I also found what I considered to be a charismatic LBM (little brown mushroom) that likely belongs to the Gymopus</em>/Marasmius</em> group. And there was a beautiful polypore, Phellinus tremulae,</em> growing on aspen.</p> Perhaps the find of the day was another LBM I found. After bringing it back to the herbarium, we were able to identify it as Tubaria confragosa</em>. As luck would have it, our herbarium had only one other specimen of this. That specimen was collected in 1969 by Sam Mitchel on his ranch. As a scientist, I don’t spend a lot of time pondering about mystical forces in the universe, but when something like this happens I’d be lying I said I didn’t enjoy thinking about it.</p> Because of this trip we were able to add several new collections to the Sam Mitchel Herbarium. The trip was very enlightening and I enjoyed the thought of walking through the same woods that Sam collected in nearly half a century ago. After all this time I think Sam would be happy to see what his little herbarium has turned into, and that his simple passion for studying mushrooms ended up becoming his legacy.</p> “I practice medicine to make a living and I study mushrooms to make living worthwhile.” - Sam Mitchel</p> Our visit would not have been possible without the generosity of Bob Lentz and Bob Avis who were kind enough to allow us to roam their property, much like Sam did 50 years ago. Also, thanks to Pete Seibert and Deborah Wittman for facilitating contact with the current owners of the ranch.</em></p>
</p> You bring the party, we’ll bring the hundreds of thousands of twinkling lights!</p> A holiday party at Blossoms of Light</a> is a great way to celebrate the end of the year with your friends, family, or colleagues. Choose from one of four versatile and unique indoor spaces to offer you guests a warm retreat when they aren’t outside enjoying our glittering winter wonderland.</p> With booking options available every night of the week, we can accommodate parties large and small. Holiday party packages include a Blossoms of Light ticket for each guest in attendance, as well as a limited quantity of tables and chairs.</p> Book your party today and treat your guests to the best-decorated holiday party in town!</p> Contact us for more information at private.events@botanicgardens.org</a> or 720-865-3551.</p>
August and September are prime months to see the water gardens in their full glory. This is the season that every water gardener daydreams about during the winter. The design and planning of the displays during those cold, dark months, along with the work of propagating and planting during the spring, have paid off with a colorful rainbow of aquatic blooms.</p> Tropical waterlilies (Nymphaea</em> hybrids), Water Platters (Victoria</em> ‘Longwood Hybrid’ and Victoria</em> cruziana</em>) and marginal aquatic plants (named for their growth along the margins of a pond in water-logged soil or shallow water) including Canna </em>hybrids and Red-Stemmed Thalia (Thalia geniculata f. ruminoides) </em>are all at peak growth and bloom. Hardy waterlilies also continue to flower during this time.</p> While this is a great time to enjoy the fruits of their labor, there is still work for our horticulturists and volunteers to do in the summer months to ensure the display ponds look their best.</p> Grooming</strong></h3> Volunteers and staff work in the ponds three to four days a week performing general maintenance. This includes removing aging leaves as they begin to turn yellow and decay, as well as removing spent blooms, which last an average of three days for most waterlily varieties. This routine grooming accomplishes three goals – it keeps the water garden displays looking their best, prevents older plant growth from decomposing in the ponds (which would feed algae), and it ensures that the plants are able to put all of their energy into producing new growth, rather than seed pods if the blooms have been pollinated.</p> Fertilizing</strong></h3> Along with grooming the plants weekly, volunteers and staff also fertilize all of our aquatic plants twice a month from early June through late August. The exceptions to this schedule are the Water Platters and Gorgon Plants (Euryale ferox</em>), which are fertilized weekly with increasing doses of fertilizer as they grow through late September.</p> Specially formulated aquatic plant fertilizer tablets called Pondtabbs (10-14-8) are used to feed all of our aquatic plants. Each of our plants grows in its own container of soil, and the tablets are pushed into the soil around the root system of each plant at a dose of one tablet per gallon of soil, with a higher dose given to our Water Platters and Gorgon Plants.</p> We stop fertilizing our hardy aquatic plants in late August in order to encourage them to taper off their growth and begin preparing for winter dormancy. Tropical waterlilies are encouraged to form tubers in the soil by also discontinuing their fertilization in late August. These tubers will be harvested in October and stored for use in subsequent seasons.</p> Other Routine Maintenance</strong></h3> In addition to grooming and fertilizing the plants, the Gardens also performs routine maintenance of the water in the ponds. A non-toxic, food-grade black dye is added to the ponds weekly as needed in order to maintain the dark coloration seen throughout our displays. This dye performs multiple tasks - it blocks out sunlight to deter the growth of single-celled and string algae, hides the planting containers and creates a reflective surface that makes the aquatic plants stand out even more.</p> Beneficial bacteria is also added to the waterways weekly as needed. These microscopic organisms work to break down excess nutrients in the water, which in turn keeps the growth of algae to a minimum.</p> Another part of our routine maintenance is “tweaking” the displays as the plants grow throughout the season. With each plant in its own container, it is easy to move plants to keep them from growing into or over each other. Water gardeners are also able to move plants to the ponds’ edges as they come into peak bloom so visitors can get a better view.</p> We hope you will take the opportunity to visit in the coming weeks while the water gardens are looking their best. Stay tuned for a fall update detailing our work preparing the aquatic plant collection for the upcoming winter months!</p>
</p>On select evenings each summer, the Gardens transforms into one of Denver’s most unique outdoor venues for the Summer Concert Series. Concert-goers carve out their favorite spots on the grassy slopes of the UMB Bank Amphitheater, wander the Gardens as twilight sets in, and enjoy intimate performances from their favorite artists in the shadow of the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory.</p>For a behind-the-scenes look at how these artists get to the stage, we talked to Roger Menell, the concert director/talent buyer at Swallow Hill Music, for insights into the process that leads up to the line-up announcement each year.</p>How far in advance of the first concert does Swallow Hill begin the search/booking process for artists?</strong>As soon as the Summer Concert Series ends, we earnestly start the booking conversations for the following summer, but it can sometimes start even earlier. I can think of one instance where we confirmed a booking for the following year while the current season was still underway. It usually takes a few months of back and forth communication with talent representatives before the shows start confirming.</p>What are the most important factors you consider when you are booking the Summer Concert Series?</strong>There are so many factors to consider! However, the most important ones are:</p>Can the artist fill the amphitheater with fans?</li>Is the artist a good fit for the venue? Will their sound work in this unique environment?</li>Will the Denver Botanic Gardens/Swallow Hill community want to support this artist?</li>Does the booking compliment the rest of season? We try to book a mixture of musical styles and also try to balance familiar names with some fresh faces.</li></ul>How are opening acts selected? Are they typically part of the tour, or do they book separately?</strong>It's about half and half, but some shows have no opener at all. Usually, about 40% of the headliners will bring an opener as part of their tour, 40% of the openers are booked separately by Swallow Hill, and 20% of the shows have no opener. If you attend a show called “An Evening With…”, there is no opener for that show.</p>What are the biggest challenges to booking the Summer Concert Series?</strong>The greatest challenge is competition with other venues; there are lots of places to play in Denver in the summer. Dates are always a huge challenge, as well. A tour may be coming through Denver at a time that falls outside the time frame of the concert series, or the tour may occur on dates that the Gardens are unavailable.</p>How many Swallow Hill team members does it take to run a concert at the Gardens? </strong>At the show, we'll have around six staff members from Swallow Hill on site. However, this doesn't include our contracted employees who take care of the technical aspects of the production, such as lighting and sound. We're also backed up by our administrative teams in finance, marketing etc. back at our office. Denver Botanic Gardens also provides a team of staff for each concert to manage setup, security, visitor entry, VIP reserved areas, and more. It takes lots of people to produce these concerts!</p>Are there any shows you think we shouldn’t miss?</strong>Sure! You shouldn't miss The Mavericks (July 28) or Herbie Hancock (August 14). However, those shows are already sold out! We only have tickets remaining for 3 of the 15 shows at the Gardens: Randy Newman (August 7), Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home “Love and Comedy” Show (August 13 at Chatfield Farms) and Lucero with special guest Paper Bird (August 27).</p>The Summer Concert Series, presented by UMB Bank, is produced as a partnership of Denver Botanic Gardens and </em>Swallow Hill Music</em></a>.</em></p>
This summer, in addition to interns from around the country, we are hosting international interns from Argentina.</p> Three students enrolled in the horticulture program at the University of Rio Negro in Bariloche, Argentina joined us in late June and will be spending time with us through early September learning propagation and production techniques. Post-internship, they will be able to take the techniques learned here and apply them in their country.</p> The three interns are Irene Edwards, Ramiro Lincan and Lucas Vignera. They have been blogging about their experiences and we would like to share these here on our blog as well. Enjoy their blogs (which will be in Spanish) and experience the horticultural journey through their eyes.</p> Here are the three students in our tissue culture lab learning tissue culture propagation techniques. </p> </p>
Here at Denver Botanic Gardens there are several different gardens whose purpose is one that many don’t associate with the Gardens: producing food. The Gardens grows produce for a variety of purposes, but eventually this food will get donated to great organizations like S.A.M.E. Café or even used here in The Hive Café. The donations are given from:</p> Le Potager garden</li> The Home Harvest Garden in the Mordecai Children’s Garden (which is an amazing educational experience in itself)</li> The Mariposa Urban Farm, located in a newly renovated part of town near Mariposa Street and 11th Avenue</li> </ul> In all the produce gardens, especially the ones located at Denver Botanic Gardens, their purpose is not simply to grow food efficiently to donate it, but to make a public example while doing it. The garden Le Potager is named very specifically and is French for “the kitchen garden.” This has a different meaning than La Potager, meaning “the vegetable garden.” This adds even more to the significance and purpose to the garden itself, making it an example for those who find the idea of growing their own food and giving them ideas for it to do this.</p> As one walks through this garden there are examples for gardening in any home situation, from container gardening in an apartment setting to what you can do in a small backyard if only a self-sustaining harvest is needed. This is exemplified by the sectional star, which can be made of many different types of materials, string and stakes, recycled boards, or even more pleasing to the eye, a wicker-like material similar to what is shown in the gallery below. Some people may even do a flower border, filling the insides with harvestable plants. Other ideas in Le Potager include alternatives to trellising and staking your tomatoes and what you can do to easily protect the plants from animals.</p> The Home Harvest Garden is one that does an excellent job displaying raised beds to help make an easy pros-and-cons list when considering this for a local yard. The ease of access in height for children and the way the vegetables are attention-grabbing and attractively on display are pros when considering them here in the Gardens setting. If a visitor walks through on a future visit, they will notice that the produce sometimes has been rotated out. This is yet another example of a good tip given to the visitors of the Home Harvest Garden, giving them good rotation times for their own vegetable gardens according to the time of the year. For example, what to add when the lettuce season is coming to an end and when peppers may be getting closer to being harvested, even when it is finally safe to start planting tomatoes.</p> Crop production from the Gardens is not something that many people know about, or that they could come here hoping to get some their questions answered or innovative ideas, however it is a program that deserves to be highlighted! Next time you are on the lookout for different garden ideas, take a stroll through the Gardens and it may give you a great new concept to try out on your own!</p> About the author: My name is Amanda Williams and my internship title is Urban Ag and Community Development. This year I am spending my summer working as an intern at Denver Botanic Gardens with four other young women</a>. I am originally from South Dakota and I’m loving my time here in Denver. My internship has been an enabler towards enhancing my knowledge about crop plants and public gardens, while opening a door to future opportunities that I am passionate about in the field of horticulture.</em></p>
