Planning your engagement during the most wonderful time of the year? We can help! </p> Start this unforgettable moment by walking down a beautiful pathway full of extravagant holiday lights while spending quality time snuggled close to your partner. Then sneak away to the Victorian Secret Garden, which is an intimate gazebo along the pathway, where you and the love of your life can feel secluded when you pop the question! </p> </picture> </div> </article> We offer a Merry and Bright engagement package during Blossoms of Light</a> that includes: </p> Three tickets to Blossoms of Light </li> Private reservation for 30 minutes in the Victorian Secret Garden </li> Permission to bring one bottle of champagne</li> </ul> We would love to have you share this incredible moment here at the Gardens with a dazzling holiday background. Contact the private events team at York Street at 720-865-3551 or private.events@botanicgardens.org</a> to book your engagement starting on October 5, 2021!</p> </picture> </div> </article>
If you are a Denverite and like to walk, you might be familiar with the High Line Canal that runs through the city. The 71 miles of this old irrigation canal make it one of the longest urban trails in the U.S. In addition to serving us as a recreational corridor, the High Line Canal also serves as habitat for local flora and fauna. In a time of rapid urbanization and environmental change, it is important to think about the future of urban greenspaces like the canal. </p> I am a graduate student in the integrative biology program at the University of Colorado, Denver, with my research advisor, Dr. Chrissy Alba, based at Denver Botanic Gardens. My interests lie in community ecology, disturbance and conservation. For my graduate thesis, I am researching a one-mile section of the High Line Canal that is being outfitted to serve as green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). This GSI aims to divert urban stormwater run-off into the canal and hold the water in place for a period of time, ideally to prevent flooding, improve bank infiltration and improve downstream water quality. This increase in flooding in the bed of the canal, expected to add 100 days of standing water each year, will in turn affect the plant communities that exist on the canal bank. How the plant community responds to this flooding disturbance is affected by the existing vegetation and the seeds that reside in the soil, known as the soil seed bank. The soil seed bank acts as stored biodiversity potential for this area, in the way that a library serves as stored potential for learning, with each book waiting to be read—each seed is waiting to be germinated. The species composition of the germinating seeds will affect the diversity and functioning of this important urban ecosystem. </p> The species composition of the existing vegetation (above) often differs from the soil seed bank (below), more or less so depending on the type of habitat you are in. How similar they are can determine the habitat’s capacity for change. I want to know what this capacity for change looks like, so I am germinating these seeds from soil samples taken from this section of the canal in a greenhouse at Chatfield Farms. I have had over 700 seeds germinate! I am working on identifying these plants and then will look at how similar the species composition is to the existing vegetation, and how they function in an ecosystem: Are they invasive or native? Wetland species or upland species? Do they have traits that will help with the intended goals of the GSI—such as flooding control, increasing bank infiltration, and water quality? </p> I hope this exploratory case-study will add an ecological context for those of us who enjoy walking along the canal, provide information for land management of the canal and aid in developing our scientific understanding of disturbance ecology in urban spaces. </p> Whatever I end up finding, it has been an incredible experience to see the abundance of life that can bloom from a couple handfuls of soil. It reminds me of the potential that exists under the surface, out of sight; and to believe in the ability for change to happen—even if all you can see is dirt. </p> </p> This article was contributed by graduate student Alissa Iverson. </em> </p>
As the growing season begins winding down, it is time to look ahead to next year and how we can continue improving our gardens and landscapes while becoming more sustainable. Here are 7 easy ways to do so:</p> Start a compost bin/pile</h4> Composting is easy and fun and will reduce the amount of household organic waste (e.g. kitchen scraps, biodegradable paper products, etc.) that would otherwise end up in landfills. Additionally, a compost pile will provide you with high quality decomposed organic matter packed with nutrients and microorganisms that will improve your garden soil and allow your plants, trees and shrubs to reach their maximum potential.</p> </picture> </div> </article> Allow leaves to decompose naturally</h4> In autumn, deciduous trees drop their leaves, making our gardens seem messy. These leaves are incredibly beneficial to your soil and plants as they help insulate new plantings during cold winter months and most decompose by spring to infuse the soil with nutrients and microbes. An easy way to ensure that all the fallen leaves decompose by spring is to rake them into small piles and mow over them to break them down first. Then, simply reapply the leaf mulch to your garden beds generously.</p> Reduce the size of your lawn area/increase the amount of garden space or hardscape area</h4> This is an excellent way to reduce your overall water consumption and make your garden more efficient and sustainable. Removing excessive turf areas will also help minimize the number of Japanese beetles that can grow and thrive as grubs in lawn areas. </p> </picture> </div> </article> Install a rain barrel</h4> Adding a rain barrel to your garden is an excellent way to reduce your dependency on the municipal water supply. Plants also grow better with rainwater as it is free of chemicals such as chlorine and has a lower pH which allows plants to uptake nutrients more effectively. </p> Plant drought-tolerant trees and shrubs</h4> Adding drought-tolerant trees and shrubs enhances your garden dramatically while providing shade and habitat for birds, pollinators and beneficial insects. As trees mature and provide a canopy above the garden, they will aid in reducing solar heat gain in and around the home and help reduce evaporation during the hottest months of the year. </p> </picture> </div> </article> Use organic seeds and fertilizers</h4> Plant organic, non-GMO seeds and switch out chemical fertilizers for organic fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers add harmful salts to the soil over time and destroy beneficial microbes and fungi in the soil that plants rely on to grow and thrive. They can also leech into ground water and run off into nearby streams and water bodies, causing harm to aquatic life. Selecting organic fertilizers that release slowly over the season and don’t contain excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorous can help improve soil long term and help your garden become greener and more sustainable.</p> Water smart </h4> Water your gardens in early morning or late evening when temperatures are cooler and water loss from evaporation is minimized. Soaker hoses and drip systems reduce water loss even further by releasing water directly to the roots of plants. If watering in the evening, allow enough time for the foliage of plants to dry off before nightfall to minimize problems such as powdery mildew. </p> </picture> </div> </article>
I grew up working in my family’s gardens and volunteering in community gardens. This developed my passion for both people and plants. It was this upbringing that led me to choose a double major of tourism and hospitality as well as public horticulture. Growing up in Tennessee gave me access to a large variety of ornamental and agricultural gardening. However, my plant knowledge and interaction were relatively limited to plants that enjoyed hardiness zones 6 and 7.</p> My first and only interaction with cacti and succulents was through the greenhouses at my college campus. Because of that, I have truly enjoyed expanding and developing my knowledge as this year’s Cacti and Succulent Collection curation intern.</p> My intern projects consisted of redesigning and planting the Cacti and Succulent House</a> that is located within the Rock Alpine Garden. I also worked on accessioning and inventorying the Gardens’ Cacti and Succulent Collection.</p> While completing these projects I not only learned how to plan and plant a display to fit aesthetic and educational goals, but I also became more comfortable with different cacti and succulent species. I enjoyed experimenting with planting design and layout while also learning about how to handle cacti and succulents. This project also taught me how to intrigue and entertain the public through plant displays. I also learned a lot about cross pollination, hybridization, mutation and grafting. Seeing these methods first-hand in different plants helped with my ability to identify and even produce these modifications. </p> I feel incredibly lucky, and I am grateful to have been an intern at Denver Botanic Gardens this summer. This opportunity has taught me so much about plants, horticulture and the people who make it possible for the public to enjoy and learn. I can leave saying my passion for public horticulture has been not only strengthened but also more focused.</p> Julia Adams is from Nashville, TN. She’s currently a senior at University of Tennessee double majoring in tourism and hospitality and plant sciences with a concentration in public horticulture. She hopes to work for a public garden focusing on community outreach to combine her two majors and passions.</em></p>
Sometimes nature throws you a bone. Too much of the information coming to us these days deals with the troubling reality of climate and struggling ecosystems. But then nature comes around and reminds us of its wonderous beauty and why our efforts to conserve it are so worthwhile.</p> The mushrooms of 2021 were magnificent in the Southern Rockies. Many a lifelong mushroom hunter in Colorado have been saying this is the best year they have ever seen. And it seems fitting that after the year that was 2020, we were able to capture the fascination of mushrooms with two amazing events. In August, the North American Mycological Association</a> (NAMA) held their annual mycological foray at the YMCA Snow Mountain Ranch near Granby, Colorado. The following weekend many of those same NAMA members took the opportunity to attend the Telluride Mushroom Festival</a>. And like the many cooped up people of the past year, it was as if the mushrooms themselves were tired of isolating during the drought and made an appearance en masse.</p> For NAMA I have the pleasure of serving as the Voucher Collections Project Chair. This job requires coordinating participants at the event as they come back from their forays in the field. Upon their return, we cordon them off to specific tables where they unpack their bounty. There we guide them in filling out specimen labels with their name, when and where they collected their specimens. </p> Because there are over 200 participants in the foray, this is a big job. To help me with this, NAMA supports up to six student assistants to attend NAMA. This year we were joined by Annie Schauster (former Gardens volunteer) and Alex Smith who are graduate students in Dr. Sara Branco’s lab at CU Denver. Olivia Filialuna is a returning assistant who helped the project in 2019 when the NAMA Foray was held in Paul Smith’s, New York. Clarissa Arana is a local mycology enthusiast from Ward and was tremendously helpful. These four, along with my two students, Gary Olds and Justin Loucks, made a fantastic team. Altogether we preserved over 160 specimens, each representing a unique species collected over the weekend. No simple feat when these need to be sorted out of the thousands that come through the event on Friday and Saturday.</p> After Granby, we returned with our bounty to the ecology lab in the Freyer – Newman Center at Denver Botanic Gardens. There we unpacked, sorted and processed all of the specimens from the NAMA Foray. The previous chair, Dr. Patrick Leacock, began organizing and collating the data from the weekend. Olivia helped to track down iNaturalist observation data for these specimens. Drs. Else Vellinga and Nhu Nguyen helped make sure specimens were properly dried and preserved in boxes. </p> No sooner did we box up the specimens than Gary and I needed to pack up and head to the Telluride Mushroom Festival. Each year, I need to pinch myself when I visit that town and lovely Ophir in the next valley over. This state is just too painfully beautiful sometimes. At Telluride, Gary spent a lot of time on the mountain searching for mushrooms. I got to spend quite a bit of time getting to know the author and fabled adventurer Lawrence Millman. Between Telluride and Ophir, we did not need to venture far to find a beautiful assortment of mushrooms.</p> On Thursday of the Festival, I provided a seminar on the mushroom diversity of Colorado. This talk included my annual “Telluride’s Most Wanted” where I encourage people to search for rarely seen mushrooms in the area. I reprised this talk on Saturday for a public walk-in presentation at the Telluride Library. On Sunday, during one of the last events of the Festival, I led a discussion in the park on the evolutionary history of mushrooms. There I shared all the wild and wonderful stories that justify why I study mushrooms - organisms that have tremendously captivating ways of making people fall in love with nature. </p>
Break out of the boardroom and host your holiday party in a winter wonderland!</p> What better way to celebrate the end of the year with friends, family or colleagues than surrounded by beautiful holiday lights that make you feel merry and bright? With five unique spaces</a> to choose from, there are options for all sizes!</p> From intimate parties to cocktail receptions to large groups, our team can help you find the perfect location to delight your guests. We also feature spaces that are indoor, outdoor or both. Booking availability is from November 19 to December 18 and January 3 to 8, so reserve your space now and treat your guests to the most spectacular holiday party in Denver!</p> Bring your holiday cheer to our amazing gardens this holiday season – we would love to have you! Contact us for more information at private.events@botanicgardens.org</a> or call 720-865-3551.</p> </picture> </div> </article> Marnie's Pavilion balcony</p>
Succulents are incredible creatures. Their fleshy, spheroidal, animalistic forms reach to us. They are hairy, waxy, spiny, thick, weird and familiar. The same adaptations that make them champion survivors also attract us. These creature features break our tendency toward plant blindness through a dimensionality and existence in space that we understand. We judge them as separate from their floral brethren and honor them as other beings.</p> Plants with succulent adaptations occur in every climate and bioregion on earth, and steppe regions are no exception. The Steppe Garden is particularly rich in succulent life forms, and they’re easy to spot and commune with if you know how to notice them.</p> Begin your exploration by walking through the Shady Lane entrance on the northern side of the Steppe Garden and veer to the left. These crescent moon-shaped beds are part of our South African steppe collections. Take the gravel path and look down. You’ll notice a huge variety of different Delosperma</em>, including my personal favorite, Delosperma obtusum</em>, called the dwarf purple ice plant because of its purple flowers, but also because of the dark purple tint of its leaves in winter. Circle around the bed to get a clear view of our South African succulent outcropping, an entire bed dedicated to displaying the diversity of cold-hardy succulents from that region. See if you can spot our two cold-hardy aloes, Aloe aristata</em>, which forms a tight rosette of dark green leaves, and Aloe striatula</em>, which dies to the ground every year, only to shoot up new leaves with the warmth of spring.</li> In the next bed to the south, notice the spiny Ruschia intricata</em>, a small, almost shrubby succulent that creates huge thickets in the South African Karoo. Continue walking toward the Science Pyramid and look in the direction of the canal. There are several succulents that are very important to the North American steppe in this section; the ball cactus Escobaria vivipara</em>, the banana-leaved yucca, Yucca baccata</em>, and the Colorado state cactus, Echinocereus triglochidiatus</em>.</li> Now, walk across the bridge to Patagonia. Just through the entrance, on the southwestern face of the large stone formation, notice a pot full of different species of cacti that occur in the Patagonian steppe but aren’t cold-hardy enough for us to grow outside. Just behind that pot, you can inspect a crevice garden built for several species of Patagonian cacti, notably Gymnocalycium gibbosum</em> and several different species of Austrocactus</em>.</li> After leaving Patagonia, return to the center of the Steppe Garden. If you choose to, climb the turf-covered berm and look to the north. You should have a perfect view of the planting bed surrounding the amphitheater and a dozen different candy-colored Delosperma</em> cultivars spilling around the concrete bench. Otherwise, retrace your steps and find your way to the central planters. Peek between the cracks in the stones and you might see Orostachys spinosa</em>, a succulent from Middle Asia whose structure almost resembles a spiny green sunflower.</li> Approach the final planter, known as the living stones bed, and prepare yourself for a succulent explosion. Surrounding the planting bed is a collection of pots filled with South African succulent specimens that have to be brought into our greenhouses during the winter. The planting bed itself is full of succulents in the plant family Aizoaceae. These plants, commonly known as living stones and perhaps most famously represented by the genus Lithops</em>, have adaptations of color and form that help them avoid predation by blending into their surroundings. There are several dozen species of living stones in this bed, so be sure to slow down and really explore the space. Look around, through and under the grasses for hiding succulents. Calm your mind and attune your eyes.</li> </ul>
