</p> They say life is composed of significant moments and special memories – and what better place to make yours happen than the breathtaking surroundings of Denver Botanic Gardens at York Street!</p> Immerse your guests in the unparalleled beauty of the Gardens in a wide variety of rentable spaces. Our Private Events team will walk you through the details of each of our unique venues to find the perfect space for your event. With spaces both indoors and outdoors, large and small, events of all shapes and sizes can take root and bloom at the Gardens at any time of year. </p> 2020 dates are on sale now, and the 2021 rental calendar opens on January 6. Popular dates and venues sell out quickly – so don’t delay! Your guests won’t soon forget their experience at your private event at the Gardens, and neither will you!</p> To learn more and to set up a tour appointment, contact us at private.events@botanicgardens.org</a> or call 720-865-3551.</p>
</p> The holidays are gleaming brighter than ever at Blossoms of Light™</a> this year at York Street, and thousands of visitors have already booked their tickets to enjoy the dazzling display of lights. We love welcoming first-time guests to this annual event, but we also work hard to redesign the show every year so that long-time members and visitors always have something new to look forward to.</p> How long does it take to design Blossoms of Light?</strong></p> The lead coordinators will start designing next year’s show while the current display is still up. It’s much easier to identify the areas where we need more lights, the color palettes we like and the changes we’d like to make while the gardens are still aglow with lights. After the initial walkthrough, we continue to adjust the design, modify color palettes, add or subtract trees and evaluate the experience as a whole before finalizing the design in late spring.</p> How much of the design stays the same from year to year?</strong></p> We re-assess the entire display every year, and to keep things fresh, almost every garden gets a new color palette. Usually, even if we really love the way an area looks, we won’t keep it the same for more than a couple of years. But don’t think that we forget our favorites! Palettes we like might simply move to a new location. We may also bring back colors to a certain feature after a break – this year, the teal tree in the Annuals Garden made a triumphant return! We are also always working to bring new special features to life to round out the display. This year, be sure to check out our immersive 360-degree lighting experience in Oak Grove, or the all-new projections on the Science Pyramid!</p> What factors do you consider when choosing color palettes? </strong></p> This is one of our favorite parts of the design process, but also one of the most challenging! When selecting colors, we think about the balance of “cool” and “warm” palettes, which colors look good together, where to incorporate traditional holiday palettes as opposed to more unique combinations, which colors are available in each size of bulb and more. We also think about the plant material we are decorating: would a garden look better with lots of colors, or would it be better to only select one or two colors?</p> How do you decide whether or not to decorate certain trees or plants? </strong></p> We work closely with the Gardens’ horticulturists to determine which trees and plants can be decorated. Some trees have fragile bark or branches or may be healing from a heavy spring snowfall, so we avoid those trees and exclude them from our design. For other trees, it comes down to basic logistics: if the trunks and canopies cannot be reached by ladders, buckets or climbers, then we won’t be able to decorate it. Finally, there are some areas where we would love to add more trees, but we’ve maxed out our electric power in the vicinity and don’t want to risk blowing a circuit.</p> Why are certain gardens not open during the event? </strong></p> While we’d love to open the entire property for Blossoms of Light, there are some realities of operating a night-time event in a snowy city that we must accept. Certain pathways are difficult to keep clear of snow, ice and water. We also consider how wide a path is and whether or not it is paved. Welcoming thousands of guests each night can cause crowding on narrow pathways, and unpaved paths would get messy very quickly!</p> Blossoms of Light is open every night through Jan. 3, 2020. Advance purchases are highly recommended to get the best price and to ensure admittance on your desired date. </strong></p> Get your tickets today!</a></p>
Colorado Gives Day was December 10 but it’s not too late to make your gift to Denver Botanic Gardens.</p>If you already made your gift, THANK YOU! The difference you make is profound.</p>Your gift will help nearly 40,000 children make strong connections to the natural world. Denver Botanic Gardens offers more than 500 annual programs for children ages 18 months to teens, including school programs, summer camp, home school, Scout and Head Start offerings. Sensory plant explorations and hands-on activities allow children to connect with plants in exciting, educational and healing ways that will last a lifetime. Your gift can help grow the next generation of champions for plant and environmental conservation.</p>Even though Colorado Gives Day has passed, you can still sustain your support of the Gardens by scheduling a recurring donation</strong>. Your recurring donation to Denver Botanic Gardens is support we can count on! When you use this option, you are making a commitment to donate a particular amount over a specific period of time. You can give as little as $10 per week, month, quarter or year. Simply set up your donation schedule and your deductions will happen automatically, straight from your credit card, debit card or bank account. You can also elect to cover the processing fees for your gift, making your gift go even further. To learn more about recurring donations, contact Rob Price at 720-865-3528.</p>Colorado Gives Day donations are accepted at ColoradoGives.org</a>, which features the missions, programs and finances of more than 2,500 Colorado nonprofits. Each organization’s online profile is screened by Community First Foundation to ensure specific standards are met before they are added to the program.</p>
From April to October, I and two other botanists, Daniel Bradley and Lysa DuCharme, traveled around the state on a seed-collecting mission. Armed with a list of over 100 native plant species and a well-worn road atlas, our goal was to search for large populations of these species, monitor their development throughout the summer and collect seeds when the time was ripe.</p> We were contributing to Seeds of Success (SOS), a national native seed collecting program led by the Bureau of Land Management. The 34+ million seeds collected over the course of the 2019 season will be cleaned and sorted at the U.S. Forest Service's Bend Seed Extractory in Bend, Oregon. Ultimately, they will be used for research, conservation and ecosystem restoration in support of the BLM's Native Plant Materials Development Program.</p> We traversed much of the 8.3 million acres of BLM land in Colorado and made collections across 10 western slope counties. Our travels extended from Walden to Cortez, bringing us to the wild horses of the Sand Wash Basin Herd Management Area, the lush orchards of Palisade and the red sandstone alcoves of Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.</p> We collected seeds from 16 native species, including the dust-sized seeds of basin big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata</em> ssp. tridentata</em>), the twirled pipe cleaner seeds of mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus</em>) and the fluffy tufted seeds of Indian ricegrass (Achnatherum hymenoides</em>). Given the wet spring this year, many species around the state were abundant with flowers, which meant plenty of seeds to be collected during late summer and into the fall.</p> Denver Botanic Gardens will continue collecting seeds for the SOS program next summer, when a new trio of botanists will roam the state, searching for seeds.</p> This blog post was written by Audrey Dignan, seasonal botanist in the Research & Conservation Department.</em></p> </p>
In anticipation of the completion of the Freyer – Newman Center, which will house a newly constructed library, research labs and art galleries, Denver Botanic Gardens is hosting teen-only focus groups with teens ages 13-18. The new spaces in the Freyer – Newman Center will provide opportunities for expanded innovative community and educational programming.</p> In order to learn more about opportunities teens would like to see here at the Gardens, we are holding small focus groups on Sunday, Nov. 24 to learn more about how the Gardens can better support and engage our teen audience.</p> If you are a teen or know a teen interested in becoming more involved at Denver Botanic Gardens this opportunity is for you!</p> Interested? Here’s what you’ll need to know:</strong></p> Focus group sessions will take place at the Gardens’ York Street location on Sunday, Nov. 24 from 1:30-3 p.m., or 3:30-5 p.m. You will only be required to attend one session.</li> Each session will consist of 5-10 teens ages 13-18 and will be 90 minutes long.</li> During the focus groups, teens will be led through guided, informal conversations and activities that concentrate on the hobbies and interests of teens, what they like to do in their free time and why.</li> As a thank you for their time, teens will receive a $25 Amazon gift card upon completion of the focus group session. </strong></li> If teens participate, they agree to be recorded during the session (audio only). A release form will be provided for a guardian’s approval and signature.</li> </ul> Next Steps:</strong></p> Fill out the Teen Focus Group Inquiry Form to submit your interest in participating. Inquiry forms must be submitted by 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 15, 2019. </strong>Space is limited in our focus groups. The focus groups will be filled on a first come, first served basis.</li> </ul> Teen Focus Group Inquiry Form</a></p> A Gardens staff member will reach out to you by Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019 to confirm your focus group session time.</li> </ul> Questions?</strong> Email familyprograms@botanicgardens.org.</p> </p>
