walking tour

This tour was designed by Panayoti Kelaidis, Denver Botanic Gardens’ Senior Curator and Director of Outreach.  To experience this tour, please print this page and follow the experts advice on the best way to stroll the Gardens in the month of August. 

There was hardly a drop of rain in June and July, but you’ll never know this has been one of the driest years on record when you visit the Gardens in August. We have been lucky to be able to irrigate, of course, but there are about 10 gardens here that are not irrigated at all, or very sparingly. It is worth lingering over these to see how well native and adapted plants hold up to months of no rain. The Plains Garden and Dryland Mesa hold up very well, thank you, next to the watered gardens, in my eyes. It may inspire you to relegate a part of your property to un-watered grasses and native wildflowers. 

The Gardens at York Street is justifiably famous for container gardens. This year the display is grander than ever, honoring the theme of urban gardening - in conjunction with our "Urban Nature" signature exhibit. And August is a particularly good time to come inspect how foliage and flowers balance and complement one another in the dozens of containers found in almost every acre of the Gardens. There are especially showy displays in the Romantic Gardens and in Woodland Mosaic, featuring dozens of classic annuals and some unusual tender perennials, as well. 

The "Urban Nature" containers are concentrated in two areas. The first group is directly in front of the Education Building entrance, where a series of small spaces are designed to show the variety of ways you can enliven a small patio or courtyard with a few pots and great plants. I am amazed to see a fuchsia thriving in such a hot spot! There is another long cluster of gardens hovering over the waterway just south of the All-America Selections Garden just west of the Amphitheater and Cottonwood Border. This intricate mesh of plants and architecture deserve a long, lingering look. 

The containers in South African Plaza are stunning this month. Here the bronze containers clustered around the fountain are brimming with showy pelargoniums alongside tender succulents, in a panorama of shapes and colors. Since the high mountains of South Africa are subject to monsoonal summer rains, there is a wealth of perennials that bloom in August here, including the bright blue-leaved Kniphofia caulescens and pineapple lilies (Eucomis). Few realize the latter are hardy at all, and the former--red hot pokers--is a genus with dozens of spectacular plants, most of them showier than the commonly grown and sold Kniphofia "uvaria," which is definitely misnamed. 

There is something to slow your pace in every garden. I am especially fond of the lush, late-summer drapery in the Victorian Secret Garden. The drama of the tropical-looking, giant-leaved plants, including the sun-tolerant coleus display, puts this garden at its lustrous best this month. 

Although there is a bounty of flowers everywhere, the foliage of grasses is attracting much attention. It is fascinating to compare the grass foliage in various parts of the Plains Garden, which billows in the wind this time of year. The large, more uniform blocks of grasses in the Cottonwood Border section of Western Panoramas are especially pleasing, with native verbenas and many types of daisies weaving through the gramma grasses - along with everyone’s favorites, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) and switch grass (Panicum virgatum cultivars). The squirrel tail grass is especially dramatic this year. For a few magic weeks in August, the shimmering flower heads on Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) create a golden spectacle in their various native gardens. If you happen upon a large clump in the late afternoon backlight, it may take your breath away and send you to a nursery to find a clump for your own garden!

Late summer has always seemed the most nostalgic season; everything is poised at the pitch of vigor, beauty and fulfillment. The asters, chrysanthemums, blazing and evening stars, and a wealth of other late-summer perennials create whole constellations of color – competing with marigolds, petunias and all the stalwart annuals. If you remember to deadhead helianthemums and your May-blooming salvias, like Salvia x superba or Salvia jurisicii, they will re-bloom as vigorously in August as they did for the first time in June. Roses have a second season of glorious bloom in late summer. The unusual desert willow (Chilopsis linearis) with vivid lavender or purple trumpet flowers always puts out a second set of blooms in August, if there has been sufficient rain and heat to encourage them. Seek them out in Dryland Mesa or the Water-Smart Garden; you will want to find a sunny spot to plant one back at home!