While many may prefer the bright and garish flowers found in the height of summer, November’s offerings come in a different form – persistent fruit. You might be familiar with orchards of apples, peaches or pears that were harvested in late summer and early fall. This month’s tour will look at fruit that lasts through the autumn months, often past the holidays, offering ornamentation that differs greatly from the strings of lights that one can now see around many of the trees at the Gardens in preparation for Blossoms of Light. This tour will take you through the Gardens to see some common and uncommon types of persistent fruit.</p> First, upon entering through the Bonfils-Stanton Visitor Center, look to your left behind the lowest basin of the waterway in the Welcome Garden</strong>. Three mountain alders (Alnus</em> </em>incana</em> </em>ssp. tenuifolia</em>) line the west side of the water. Their fruit is conelike and woody and forms from catkins that are eye-catching as the male flowers blow in the breeze in early spring. In nature, this native tree that is a member of the birch family is an indicator of riparian areas and is frequently found alongside cottonwoods.</li> In the O’Fallon Perennial Walk</strong> there are several roses showing off their brightly colored hips. These shiny, fleshy, red or golden colored fruits are often found in clusters, like in the Rosa </em>‘Tuscany Superb’ that is about 1/3 of the way down the brick walk on the east side. Rose hips are often an ingredient in teas or vitamins as they are high in vitamin C, but these hips will likely be consumed by hungry birds in the coming months.</li> Continue to the end of the Perennial Walk and then west through the Romantic Gardens to Woodland Mosaic</strong>. In the large garden bed north of the solarium you will see a tall tree with many bright red-orange clusters of small fruit so heavy that they are pulling the branches downward. This European mountain ash (Sorbus </em>aucuparia</em> </em>‘Fastigiata’) also has golden fall color in some years. While the common name is ash, this is not a relative of the ash trees (Fraxinus </em>spp.) that are impacted by the emerald ash borer that has recently been in the news. These fruits are a food source for birds in winter.</li> Proceed to Sacred Earth</strong> where there are two trees with persistent fruit. First, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga</em> </em>menziesii</em> </em>‘Fastigiata’) has brown cones which contain small edible nuts like the ones found on closely related pine trees. The grove of Douglas-firs can be found on the north end near the waterway across from the Hive Garden Bistro. Follow the walkway around the horseshoe-shaped pool and you’ll come to a large upright evergreen tree, a Utah juniper (Juniperus </em>osteosperma</em>). Look closely and you’ll see many blue berry-like cones which are also forage for birds.</li> Looping back to the main walkway between Sacred Earth and Dryland Mesa, follow the pathway south and take a right to walk towards the Laura Smith Porter Plains Garden</strong>. Before rounding the corner to head north, look to your right to see a small tree with numerous foot-long, thin capsules hanging and blowing in the breeze. The desert willow (Chilopsis</em> </em>linearis</em>) is more charismatic in summer when it blooms with clusters of large pink flowers. It is a member of the family Bignoniaceae</em>, which includes catalpa and trumpet vine, which also have similar long narrow fruit.</li> Continue north along this path and turn east at Le Potager, past Monet Pool to the Darlene Radichel Plant Select® Garden</strong>. To your left you’ll see a narrow upright evergreen tree with many brown cones hanging downwards near the ends of the cascading branches. This weeping white spruce (Picea</em> glauca </em>‘Pendula’) is part of the Plant Select® program and was only planted in this garden four years ago.</li> Follow the path until it comes to the next major juncture. Turn right to walk down Shady Lane</strong>. While you walk down this long sidewalk, look closely at the trees that line both sides. Fifteen different types of crabapples (Malus </em>spp. and cultivars) line this walkway and many of them are swathed with small fruit. You may notice the fruit vary in size and color. These are another fruit that are favored by birds that visit the Gardens in fall and winter. Unfortunately, many of these fruits also fall on the sidewalk, so they are considered one of the messier of our trees that have lasting fruit.</li> Our final stop is right outside the main door of the Boettcher Memorial Center</strong>. Look to the left of the door that leads into Offshoots Café and you’ll see stems with large flattened pods on them. These pods, as you might suspect, are members of the pea family. The plant is called bird of paradise (Caesalpinia</em> </em>gilliesii</em>) but it is quite different from the tropical plant that also goes by this moniker. This shrub is native to South America and produces a bright yellow flower with bright red stamens that extend well beyond the flowers.</li> </ul> Now that you’ve completed the tour, you are at a perfect spot to end your visit with a walk through the Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory or to warm your hands with a hot drink at the café.</p>
My time here at Denver Botanic Gardens has been nothing short of profound expression. As a spectator in the Gardens, it feels like a dream. Through the eyes of a summer intern, I am a dreamworker—carefully curating the vision embodied by the Gardens. This institution emphasizes the importance of connection and cooperation across fields, so that everyone finds their place of resonance, through a multitude of approaches to plants and nature.</p> My focus for the summer was in tissue culture, which allows for the propagation of plants that are difficult to produce through traditional means. Clonal production is achieved through promoting the growth of pre-existing meristems. Seed germination can be improved with more precisely controlled conditions in vitro. Tissue culture involves sterilizing plants and establishing them on an agar-based media complete with nutrients, sugars and plant hormones. This media provides all components necessary for growth, eliminating the need for light and promoting growth regardless of weather or season. Tissue culture can be used to remove virus and disease from highly desirable or rare plants, to exponentially increase the amount of plant material available and to fully nourish all environmental needs for otherwise tricky plants.</p> I spent the summer working with Erodium absinthoides </em>in vitro. This plant is highly desirable for the Plant Select® program for its luscious ground cover and purple flowers. However, it has proven to be difficult to get into tissue culture. Its growth pattern makes it harder to clean contamination hidden in the plant crevices. We tested different sterilization methods such as bleach concentration, time spent soaking to kill bacteria and fungi, and single versus multiple sterilization techniques. We found a lower bleach concentration at a longer time has proven to be more effective.</p> From there, we moved the Erodium</em> into the next stages of tissue culture where we encouraged new types of growth. These stages promote shoot and root growth using increased cytokinins and auxins, respectively. These are naturally occurring plant hormones that when added affect where a plant directs its energy. In this stage of tissue culture, called callogenesis, we used a form of plant growth called callus. A callus is made up of undifferentiated plant cells, meaning that the cells have no designated role in the plant system yet, so they can be manipulated to form the desired plant tissue by adding the proper hormones and concentrations into their media. Through this process we are able to narrow down the hormone concentrations that are most effective in the Erodium absinthoides</em> tissue culture protocol, so that it may be mass-produced for the Plant Select program and growers everywhere.</p> Outside of the tissue culture lab I also worked with the National Agricultural Technology Institute of Argentina (INTA). The Gardens has partnered with them to receive their seeds and test germination protocols for highly desirable plants. Our climate and environment in Colorado are very similar to that of Argentina because they are both steppe regions. An abundance of alpine plants and microenvironments dominate both ecosystems, making us an ideal candidate to compare cultivation techniques and maintain botanical preservation efforts. This is one of the main goals of the Gardens—to serve as a site of collection and conservation for plants around the globe. Being a part of this project only reinforces the role we have as humans to collaborate internationally for the wellness of all.</p> This blog post was written by summer intern Krista Kingsbury. Krista is a recent graduate from the University of Florida with a degree in Botanical Research. Her interests lie in learning more about the innate wisdom of plants and of nature itself. She is a yoga teacher and aspiring herbalist; through these means she seeks to understand the human connection to nature. </em></p>
A 34-hour flight brought us 12 time zones away. We touched down in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on the golden, late-summer steppe, with foothills and mountains to our left. It felt like landing outside of Boulder. Throughout our trip, we were astounded by how a place could feel so strange and yet so much like home.</p> From August 15 to September 3, we travelled through Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan on a seed collecting expedition to expand the Middle Asian steppe collections of Denver Botanic Gardens.</p> The framework for this trip was laid in 2018, when the Gardens signed The Tashkent Accord, an agreement between five Middle Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan) and the Plant Collections Collaborative (an alliance between North American gardens to support important domestic and international collecting trips) to help facilitate exchanges of plant material, resources and education between our countries and botanical institutions.</p> In Kyrgyzstan we worked with Dr. Georgy Laskov of the Kyrgyz Academy of Sciences in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. In Kazakhstan we worked with a team of botanists led by Dr. Gulnara Sitpaeva, the General Director of the Institute of Botany and Phytointroduction in Almaty, Kazakhstan. These incredible scientists acted as our botanical and cultural guides, bringing us to and through a variety of experiences.</p> In both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan we explored Middle Asian steppe in mountains, valleys, lakeshores, dunescapes, canyons and plains. On our first day, baking in the sun, we scaled the steep, sandy foothills of Kyrgyzstan’s Salt Valley, surrounded by grazing horses. On our second day we were in the cool, sub-alpine shrublands of Chunkurchak, bathing in the scent of wild oregano and dodging lightning storms. This geographic diversity is characteristic of steppe regions, and similar to terrain that one could find throughout Colorado and the Intermountain West. The flora of the countries was also synonymous to our own, both physiologically and taxonomically. The plant families of Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Fabaceae, Rosaceae, Poaceae and Apiaceae were abundant. We share genera like Artemisia, Clematis, Prunus, Stipa </em>and Allium</em>. We even share identical species like Epilobium angustifolium, Artemisia frigida </em>and Krascheninnikovia lanata</em>.</p> While in the field, we worked side-by-side with our guides. They often collected seeds for their own collections or whole plants to turn into herbarium vouchers. We ate meals together, usually something like a ploughman’s lunch, off the tailgates of trucks or spread out on plastic bags and scarves. At markets we bought strange melons to share; cantaloupes with watermelon skin, honeydew in the guise of deeply-lobed, green pumpkins. Once, a nomadic Kazakh herder gave our group a small pouch of kurt, a salty, chalky cheese meant to be carried in your pocket. These moments became ways that we could share what we couldn’t through our disjointed language. Work and sustenance became a shared space, botanical Latin and food our common tongue.</p> By the end of our trip we had made 260 collections. Following USDA-APHIS guidelines, we cleaned, inventoried, packaged and shipped our seeds directly to their ports of entry to be inspected for any pests or pathogens we might have missed while cleaning.</p> On our last night we walked the streets of Almaty, Kazakhstan, taking pictures of the stunning, Soviet-era Brutalist architecture, analogs to our own Boettcher Memorial Center and Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory. The cast concrete and heavy stonework made this faraway place feel familiar and made us consider how much a sense of place can influence our sense of home and how strangeness and familiarity can walk hand-in-hand.</p> This blog post was written by Denver Botanic Gardens' staff: Mike Bone, Curator of Steppe Collections and Kevin Philip Williams, Horticulturist</em></p>
To my friends in college I was always the crazy plant lady with a baby palm tree in her apartment, but I’ve found that here at Denver Botanic Gardens I’m the least “planty” of the plant people. I just finished my degree in Environmental Science & Policy at Chapman University in Southern California, with a special interest in urban planning, GIS and sustainable design. Searching for a way to combine my love of plants with my interest in spatial design, and also yearning to return to the Rocky Mountains (as the Utah native that I am), I was more than thrilled when I found out there was an internship at the Gardens in Plant Records and Mapping.</p> The Plant Records Department exists to maintain and nurture records of the massive living collection that is Denver Botanic Gardens. As a museum of living plants, we have tens of thousands of plants that each have their own accession number and corresponding record in our database, with information such as where they came from, where they’re planted, how long they’ve been there and what condition they’re in. Ideally, each of these plants also has a place on a comprehensive map of the Gardens—which is where I come in.</p> A normal day in the life of Jenny this summer started with coming in to work and checking my calendar to see what mapping appointments were scheduled. A mapping appointment meant I was out in a particular garden bed either with my awesome mentor Holly Parrott (plant mapping specialist) or with the horticulturist who maintains that garden, inventorying what plants exist in that bed and using a list of unmapped plants to pinpoint the locations of new ones. I’d print out whatever maps and lists I needed, load them up on a giant clipboard, slather on some sunscreen, grab my hat and my fanny pack full of erasable colored pencils, and head out for a few hours to draw maps and take inventory.</p> Then I’d head back inside, hop on BG-BASE, BG-Map and AutoCAD, and process everything I’d recorded. This was ideally a quick process, looking up plants by their accession number and updating their record and location. More often than not, it involved some serious mystery solving when accession records for individual plants were unknown. In these cases, I would identify the accession by using any information I could find concerning the source and age of the plant and any possible prior locations to pinpoint it in our database, ensuring that every plant is accounted for.</p> I got the opportunity to map a large variety of garden beds, but my main project was mapping the new Secret Passage garden bed in the Welcome Garden, just south of the Visitor Center. This garden bed was newly installed in 2018, and though it’s a vibrant and beautiful garden in person, in our mapping database it apparently contained only seven plants. After four weeks of regular mapping appointments, lost accession tags, hesitant plant ID-ing, several messy maps covered in colored lines and numbers, and A LOT of mystery solving in our database, the Secret Passage went from having seven plants mapped to having over 150! Contrasting this project with other efforts of mystery solving in older and more mature garden beds, the importance of starting out with accurate and thorough records was really driven home.</p> Though perhaps still the least “planty” of the plant people, I was embraced as an important part of the Gardens this summer and will never forget all the things I learned and the people (and plants) I got to interact with. Who knew record keeping could be so fun?</p> This blog post was written by Jenny Gritton. Jenny is originally from Utah, and graduated in 2019 from Chapman University in Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science & Policy. She loves cats, has a baby palm tree, is a certified Zumba instructor and is pursuing a career in urban planning and sustainable design.</em></p>
As we turned southward out of Montrose, the deep green of a damp forest surrounding the towering San Juan Mountains reassured us that this trip would prove worthwhile. Dr. Andy Wilson and I were making our way to the Telluride Mushroom Festival for the second time. Last year had been notoriously dry, yielding less than an abundance of mycological spoils; this year however, deep snowpack followed by a cool, wet spring would make for a different story.</p> The Telluride Mushroom Festival is this incredible mix of academic conference-like presentations, field work and interpersonal scientific outreach. Spun throughout it all is a vibe of oddball rebellion mixed with sincere optimism that we can make the world a better place. Andy and I gave back to back presentations about our work at the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi, introduced folks to the Colorado Mycoflora Project</a> and why collecting mushrooms for science is worthwhile.</p> After our lectures ended, I joined our mycology lab seasonal, Justin Loucks, in the identification tent that sat in a tiny park in the middle of town. We hunkered down as waves of foragers returned with baskets full of mushrooms varying wildly in color, shape and odor. My goal was to get collectors to donate their specimens to our herbarium and then squeeze as much information as possible out of them about where and when their collections were made. Without much mycological background myself, I relied on Justin to point out those with the most interesting taxa in their baskets. From there I pulled the citizen scientists aside to a picnic table, essentially interviewing them to obtain their names, contact information and as much ecological detail as possible regarding the fungi. Often, we looked over maps to determine just exactly where they were hunting, giving me an accurate and precise set of coordinates to assign to the future museum specimen. These conversations, always touching on the beauty of the forest and the importance of biodiversity research, easily became my favorite part of the festival.</p> On the following day, Andy, Justin and I were joined by Amy Honan of Western Colorado University and Jeff Ravage of the Coalition for the Upper South Platte to get in on the foray action for ourselves. Amy led us to one of her secret spots near the town of Ophir. We didn’t make it far along the trail before everyone was posted up, surveying their own meter by meter area, carefully documenting each little fungus through photography and field notes. We had already obtained many of the larger, more charismatic species from festival participants, so our focus shifted to smaller and less noticeable forest inhabitants. We collected everything we could fit into our dryer. Andy and I ventured over the white-knuckle-inducing Red Mountain Pass, where we surveyed near the Ironton ghost town before making our way toward Durango. We stopped at the site of the devastating 416 Fire that burned the year prior. Though the area was rather dry, we found a spring upwelling water amid the scorched forest, harboring thousands of the orange cup fungus Geopyxis carbonaria, </em>which grows on wood and forest floor that has been charred by fire.</p> Our mycology team is still identifying and properly curating the fungi, but in the end we brought back 195 specimens, each with geographic coordinates and collector information, from eight counties in Southwest Colorado. In just a few days the holdings in the Sam Mitchel Herbarium of Fungi from that part of Colorado were nearly doubled. I have no doubt our San Juan foray will keep on giving, as the specimens and their data are studied for centuries to come.</p>
</p> In just a few days, the Gardens will dress up for Halloween for Glow at the Gardens™</a>, our nighttime celebration of all things pumpkin. Using all real pumpkins grown by local farmers, our team of pumpkin artists will create nearly a dozen larger-than-life pumpkin sculptures, hand-carved showpiece pumpkins, and of course, hundreds and hundreds of classic jack-o’-lanterns. While we love the elaborate sculptures, the classic jack-o’-lanterns hold a special place for us: after all, there is no symbol of Halloween more quintessential than the jack-o’-lantern!</p> But… why? Where did this tradition actually come from? Why do we all buy an over-sized gourd, carve one side into a scary face and plop it on the porch with a candle for all to see? The truth is that no one is really sure! The practice likely evolved from traditions stemming from a variety of cultures. There are, however, a few stories and themes that seem consistent from source to source.</p> Most agree that the word “jack-o’-lantern” developed in 1660s English folklore and was another name for a "will-o’-the-wisp": a phenomenon of faint lights appearing over bogs and wetlands that was commonly associated with magic and fairies. Variations of the will-o’-the-wisp story are present in folklore all over Europe.</p> It is also known that gourd and vegetable carving has been observed in numerous cultures for hundreds of years. The Irish seem like the most likely candidates for bringing the idea to the United States, as they are known to have carved turnips and beets into ghoulish faces representing goblins or spirits. In the United States, where pumpkins were readily available, the turnips and beets were no longer the ideal canvas.</p> Another legend is that of Stingy Jack, a blacksmith who managed to hoodwink the devil through a series of clever ruses into never claiming his soul. Upon his death, he was fated to linger on earth for all eternity and has only a burning coal to light his way, becoming known as "Jack of the Lantern."</p> Regardless of its origin, the jack-o’-lantern is easily one of the most important elements of American Halloween celebrations. Whether it’s a single jack-o’-lantern on your stoop or a display of hundreds of spooky faces side by side at Glow at the Gardens, there’s nothing like a hollowed-out pumpkin with a candle inside to evoke the nostalgia of trick-or-treating, costume contests, haunted houses and spooky October nights.</p> Join us Oct. 21-25, 2019 to celebrate the jack-o’-lantern in all its glory at Glow at the Gardens. Tickets are extremely limited and are expected to sell out in advance. Purchase tickets </strong>online</strong></a> or at the Bonfils-Stanton Visitor Center at 1007 York Street. </strong></p> New this year! Stop by the Gardens York Street location on Saturday, Oct. 26, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m., to take home a jack-o’-lantern from the show for free, while supplies last!</strong> Gardens' membership or admission required for entry.</p>
</p> The tradition of gathering together in the winter months goes back almost as far as humanity itself. Today, that tradition is celebrated by families, friends, and even by companies and organizations that want to recognize the hard work and accomplishments of their team over the past year.</p> Unfortunately, by the time most of us are ready to put autumn in the rear-view mirror and begin thinking about the winter holidays, many of the prime dates and venues for holiday party rentals are already booked. Competition for caterers and entertainers becomes equally fierce. As the Blossoms of Light™</a> holiday parties at the Gardens become more and more popular each year, we recommend booking your event as soon as possible so you and your guests don’t miss out on this unique, nationally-ranked display of over half a million lights.</p> But fear not, you’re not too late! With several unique spaces and booking options available between November 29 – December 21, 2019 and November 27 – December 20, 2020</strong>, we can accommodate parties of almost any size or style during Blossoms of Light. And don’t forget – your guests get the special experience of wandering through our dazzling wonderland of light and color when they aren’t retreating to your venue for treats and beverages.</p> Celebrate the end of the season with your colleagues or loved ones at Blossoms of Light; it’s sure to be a night they’ll remember for years to come. Contact us for more information at private.events@botanicgardens.org</a> or 720-865-3551.</p>
</p> With the temperatures still soaring into the high 80s, it’s hard to believe that it’s already time to prepare our gardens for fall bulb planting. But, if a thriving bed of brilliant or pastel blooms is your goal for this spring, now is the time to begin! Our annual Fall Plant & Bulb Sale</a> is the perfect place to shop for your bulbs, tubers and rhizomes.</p> Like any type of gardening, bulb planting can feel overwhelming if you’ve never done it before. Fortunately, we have a team of experts that can give you a leg up on making your flower beds the envy of the neighborhood.</p> Planning</strong></p> Before buying your bulbs, consider the following:</p> Will you plant them in a shady or sunny location?</li> When do you want your flowers to bloom? In general, crocus, snowdrops, dwarf iris and Siberian squill are very early bloomers. Grape hyacinths, tulips, daffodils, fritillaria and common hyacinths come next. Alliums, bearded iris, Dutch iris and foxtail lilies bloom in late spring or early summer.</li> How much water will you give your bulbs? How often do you run your irrigation?</li> Do you want bulbs that come back year after year without replanting or will you want to change your bulb display, using different types and colors?</li> Do you have lots of squirrels in your area? Focus on planting bulbs that squirrels don’t like to avoid them digging up and ruining your display. </li> </ul> Purchasing</strong></p> When buying bulbs, make sure they are firm and healthy looking. Some surface damage is okay as long it doesn’t compromise the bulb’s performance. At Fall Plant & Bulb Sale, our horticulture staff can assist you with making these evaluations.</li> Make sure you read the instructions on each bulb package to understand when they need to be planted, how deep and what sort of care they require.</li> If you aren’t planting your bulbs immediately, be prepared to store them in a dry, dark place that is cool but not freezing. Bulbs should not be stored in a refrigerator where fruits and vegetables are also stored.</li> </ul> Planting</strong></p> Amend your soil if needed to ensure good drainage, which is essential for all bulbs. </li> For planting spring blooming bulbs in the Denver area, the best time to plant is October when the average soil temperature is about 55˚F. If you plant too early, the warmer soil temperatures may burn the flower already developing inside the bulb and it won’t bloom.</li> For fall blooming bulbs, plant them immediately and they will bloom this fall.</li> In general, plant bulbs 3-4 times as deep as the height of the bulb with the tip facing up and the root zone facing down. Imagine 3-4 bulbs stacked on top of each other. Some bulbs are exceptions to this rule, so refer to the instructions for each bulb. If your soil has more clay, plant them a little shallower. If your soil is sandy, plant them a little deeper.</li> When planting lots of bulbs across a large area, dig the entire area to the desired depth. Then, place your bulbs as desired and fill back in with the soil you removed. This will go much faster than digging individual holes!</li> Water the bulbs very well after you plant them. This watering is important for the root formation that begins shortly after planting.</li> Fertilizer is not necessary with the initial planting. Bone meal for bulbs is not recommended in most Denver soils.</li> </ul> Post-Bloom</strong></p> After the plants bloom in the spring, leave the foliage to die back on its own. By doing so, the bulb receives maximum energy through photosynthesis for next season’s bloom.</li> To hide the fading foliage, plant summer-blooming annuals or perennials near the bulbs.</li> If you planted bulbs that naturalize, don’t deadhead and let them go to seed so they will increase.</li> </ul> Stop by the Fall Plant & Bulb Sale this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 27 and 28, to pick up plants and bulbs for your own fall garden. Members receive 10 percent off all purchases! </strong> Free admission to the Plant & Bulb Sale and to the Gardens.</p>
During my time as the Rock Alpine Garden intern, I have been lucky enough to embark on many adventures into the field. I’ve added fencing around the montane gardens at Mount Goliath, summited Mount Evans to collect herbarium specimens with Horticulture Specialist Amy Schneider, hiked across Horseshoe Ridge with visiting alpine gardeners from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and passed through alpine tundra sites used for species richness surveys by my mentor, Curator of Alpine Collections Mike Kintgen.</p> In my travels, I have seen many interesting plants of Colorado. On one memorable hike, I saw a singular bright stemmed plant with red, fruiting capsules. I pondered this unique plant and considered possible identifications: was it an orchid or possibly a mycoheterotroph (a plant that gets all its food from parasitism rather than photosynthesis)? I took photos and consulted the experts back at Denver Botanic Gardens. My instincts were right! The plant was Corallorhiza wisteriana</em>, or spring coralroot, a mycoheterotrophic orchid species that contains no chlorophyll. How cool!</p> On another outing, Tom Freeth (from the Davies Alpine House at Kew Gardens) insisted we stop to admire a field of Castilleja integra</em>, a hemi-parasitic plant in the family Orobanchaceae. I was more than pleased to inspect the flowers and mull on their apt common name, paintbrush, in relation the swaths of red across an otherwise unremarkable grazing field. My eyes danced from one patch to the next before landing on one outlying individual: a yellow flower form. I called my co-botanizers and to my delight they proclaimed I had found an albino version of the species.</p> Another favorite mountain species, Frasera speciosa</em> (also known as green gentian, elkweed or monument plant), is an alpine plant that can be found around Colorado’s foothills, forests and meadows, ranging in a montane environments from subalpine to alpine. These robust angiosperms can grow taller than I stand and are monocarpic, flowering once in their lifetime. Each flower generally has four fringed petals, however, while hiking in the Mosquito Range of Colorado, I found a specimen with six petals! These mutant versions are a testament to genetic diversity and the old botanist’s adage: for every rule there is an exception.</p> This blog post was written by Emily Rose Alworth. Emily is the Rock Alpine Garden summer intern at the Gardens. Recently, she completed her undergraduate education focused on botany, ecology, mycology, and fine arts at Sarah Lawrence College. </em></p>
Denver Botanic Gardens is excited to announce that our Sensory Processing and Autism Resource Kits (SPARK) are available for use, free of charge, on a first-come, first-served basis! They may be checked out from the Helen Fowler Library in the Freyer – Newman Center at our York Street location. The backpacks were designed and created by the Autism Community Store in partnership with the Autism Society of Colorado.</p> The packs are a resource for people of all ages with autism or sensory needs, to help them feel safe and supported while exploring the Gardens. Each pack includes a garden-themed Seek & Find weighted lap pad, wiggle seat cushion, noise-reducing headphones, visor, fidget keychains, hand-operated fan, turquoise sunglasses, calming strategies card and an outdoor blanket.</p> What’s included:</p> Garden-themed Weighted Discovery Lap Pad – </strong>Weighing in at over two pounds, this lap pad does double duty. The therapeutic weight can be calming to the nervous system, helping the user stay seated more comfortably. The lap pad’s garden-theme contents provide tactile and visual stimulation that can offer a calming distraction in a challenging environment.</li> Wiggle Cushion – </strong>“Wiggle seats” can be an effective seating option for people who have a difficult time focusing or staying put in their seats. These helpful self-regulation seating devices provide subtle movement input (gentle bouncing and/or rocking) without getting up from your seat! The calming (or alerting) movement input makes it easier for many children and adults to stay calm and focused.</li> Noise-reducing Headphones – </strong>Noise reduction headphones provide an auditory buffer. They can help people with noise sensitivity explore environments that might otherwise been too uncomfortable for them.</li> Visor – </strong>The visor is a comfortable means of shading the eyes from natural and artificial overhead light while also providing a sense of enclosure and protection.</li> Fidget Toys – </strong>The fidget toys attached to the zipper pulls of the backpack help keep busy fingers engaged. Contrary to what many people believe, fidgeting actually helps sensory seeking people stay calm and focused.</li> Hand-operated Fan – </strong>The fan is manually operated with a crank. It is a fidget toy that will be enjoyed by visitors who like spinning things or a cause-effect toy. The fan also empowers a guest with a cooling tool.</li> Turquoise Glasses – </strong>For some people, colored glasses can be relaxing and may help the brain process the information it sees. Each person has a unique color preference, but turquoise is one of the most popular.</li> Calming Strategies Card – </strong>This card offers opportunities for non-verbal cues.</li> Outdoor Blanket – </strong>The outdoor blanket unfolds to offer a comfortable nest for a visitor who craves a sensory break.</li> </ul> Be sure to check out our sensory friendly events that provide an opportunity to explore the Gardens with fewer visitors and hands-on sensory activities. The low-sensory SPARK mornings and evenings are offered during the summer and are free with advance registration. Call 720-865-3500 for more information.</p>
For this walk we’ll stay outside of the Gardens’ gates, exploring the gateways to the Gardens instead. The streetscapes of Denver Botanic Gardens are often overlooked, or passed right by, however receive just as much curation and care as any other space that we steward. We strive to create a welcoming and immersive experience even at the edge of our realm, communicating our ideals and aesthetics to all our visitors, whether they come inside or not. One way we do this is through the extensive use of grasses in our landscape.</p> Grasses and grasslands are extremely important to the Gardens, and as such, are well represented in the collections. Denver lies on the western edge of the North American shortgrass steppe, a biome that has produced many popular ornamental garden grasses. Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium</em>), big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii</em>), blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis</em>) and switchgrass (Panicum virgatum</em>) all originate in the short and tall grass prairies of North America. These grasses, like many others from around the world, have adapted to the intense conditions of a steppe environment. Their growth points are located below or at the surface of the ground to provide protection from extreme temperatures. Their leaves are long and narrow, limiting surface area and conserving water. Their roots grow deep, tapping precious and hard-to-come-by moisture.</p> Walking through a field of grasses is like swimming through an ocean – you float in a different world, somewhere between the earth and the sky as the countless blades dance and undulate in the invisible energies of the world. There are layers of life that exist all around you, often unseen, nurtured by a thick, persistent environment.</p> Start your tour on the east side of York Street by the pedestrian entrance to the parking garage. As you walk north on the sidewalk, glance across the street at the Celebration Garden </strong>to see the pillow-soft forms of Hameln dwarf fountain grass (Pennisetum alopecuroides</em> 'Hameln') and prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis</em>).</li> Looking west, see the massive earth berm of The Colorado Garden Show Promenade Garden </strong>that we call the “West Wedge.” Looking up the hillside notice two very popular landscaping grasses, noteworthy for their showiness and long-season forms, being used to stunning effect. The tousled pink mass of the Karley Rose fountain grass (Pennisetum orientale</em> ‘Karley Rose’), runs south to north, bordered on its upper limits by the highly structural and ubiquitous Karl Foerster feather reed grass (Calamagrostis</em> × acutiflora</em> 'Karl Foerster').</li> Continue walking north and turn east on 11th Avenue. Past the row of white ash begins the Josephine streetscape, a garden space that simulates a hypernaturalistic grassland. To your left are pink diaphanous sprays belonging to the Undaunted® ruby muhly (Muhlenbergia reverchonii</em> 'PUND01S') emerging from the fall meadow.</li> Turn right at the corner and you’re beckoned south by a tall grassland turning shades of red, blue, purple and gold. Three forms of prairie switchgrass (Panicum virgatum</em> ‘Heavy Metal’, ‘Hot Rod’ and ‘Prairie Sky’), Indian Steel Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans</em> 'Indian Steel'), Windwalker® big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii</em> 'PWIN01S') and Twilight Zone little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium</em> 'Twilight Zone') are all interplanted to create a diverse and undulated landscape.</li> As you continue walking south, look to the top of the large earth berm we call the “East Wedge.” Towering above all is Cloud Nine switchgrass (Panicum virgatum</em> ‘Cloud Nine’), an almost nine-foot-tall selection of switchgrass with golden fall foliage. Also, notice the long-plumed Peruvian feather grass (Stipa ichu</em>) nestled up against the edge of the parking garage, dancing in the breeze of the passing traffic. The little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium</em>) has lost its summer moisture and chlorophyll and now stands tinged with purples and reds while its seed heads catch the low autumn light.</li> Continue walking south and encounter Morning Light maiden grass (Miscanthus sinensis</em> ‘Morning Light’) a selection with silver leaf variegation and wine-colored seed heads, lighting up a rather shady corridor.</li> Turn right and take a shortcut up the stairway to the upper level of the parking garage. Notice the large planters flitting with seedheads of blue grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis</em>) and the tufted flowers of moor grass (Sesleria</em> 'Greenlee Hybrid'), softening the hard concrete and sandstone of the parking lot.</li> From here, with your sight attuned to the wonders of grasses, you can choose your own adventure and explore the Glorious Grasslands of Mordecai Children’s Garden</strong> or enjoy the endless spectacle of autumnal grasses inside the York Street campus.</li> </ul>
