Garden Share Bristol

Busy, busy, busy.  We're all looking for ways to make out lives fulfilling while, at the same time, juggling work and family responsibilities, exercise, travel, and social activities.  How can a homeowner — even one who enjoys a bit of puttering around outdoors — create a landscape that is beautiful, eco-friendly, and engaging?

Here are 5 key ideas for designing low maintenance landscapes:

Reduce your lawn area to a size that can be mowed in 20 minutes or less.  Mowing a lawn that size is a quick bit of exercise rather than a weekend-draining chore. Other maintenance chores like watering, fertilizing and weeding — and the related expenses — will also be reduced. Once you've determined the size and shape of your 20 minute lawn, edge it with roll top steel set into the ground with only the top 1/2" protruding above the soil (the reason to use edging is to keep the grass roots out of the planting bed, not keep the mulch in it). Dedicate the rest of your yard to planting beds, native lawn to leave "rough", or hardscapes like paths, patios, decks, etc.

My back lawn takes 10 minutes to mow, the front about 8.

The anti-lawn.  Fescue grass in it's natural state.

Focus on woody plants.  Fill your planting beds with trees and shrubs, both evergreen and deciduous. These plants will give you structure and texture year-round, and require almost zero maintenance when the "right plant, right place" principal is followed.  Select from regional favorites with a good track record for hardiness. Choose an assortment to include colorful foliage, flowers, interesting bark, and small berry-like fruits. Avoid fast growing, weak wooded, messy species or those that can become invasive via root suckers or seedlings.   To lighten things up and add movement to the garden include ornamental grasses.  Most need a quick chop down to the ground once a year, and that's it.  If you want to include perennial flowers, keep them grouped together in areas of high visibility — near an entryway or patio, for example. Keep annuals and veggies in containers, exclusively. Here are some of my favorite, go-to plants.

A good assortment of shrubs, trees and a few perennials provide low care, multi-season interest to this sunny, corner property.

Different scale, different design style, same low maintenance concept.

Use weed barrier fabric and an inorganic mulch.  The monotony and glare of an entire landscape swathed in rock is not a pretty sight; it can also create a heat sink by absorbing the sun's warmth and radiating it long into the night (not what you want in the middle of summer, for sure!).  So I give this recommendation with the caveat that the landscape plantings are designed to cover at least 90% of it once they mature.  Keep these rock beds clean with a monthly rake/blow/vacuum to keep them free of debris and weed seeds.  The alternative, which can be very effective once established, is to plant perennial groundcovers to serve as a living mulch.

A clever design makes the most of an awkward space.  The unobtrusive texture of small scale pea gravel keeps the focus on the plants.

Buffalo grass as a groundcover / living mulch.   It's watered once a month in the summer and mowed once a year in early spring.

Use an automated irrigation system.  An investment, yes. But a truly effective way to save water and reduce hands-on time in the yard. Update your system to include a programmable clock for different types of sprinklers/plants/hydrozones (water delivery systems like pop-up spray heads for turf and low volume drip for shrubs), soil moisture sensors, and a rain shut off valve. Monitor your system on a regular basis to make sure that everything is running smoothly.

Use low maintenance hardscape materials.  Look for products that will age gracefully without the need to paint, spray, or power-wash.  Everything from fences, decks, and trellises to pathways, patios, and furnishings can be selected with low care as a priority. Natural stone, cedar, redwood,  and steel are just a few options.

This stylish metal gate by artist Dennis West will continue to age beautifully.

No maintenance necessary — this cedar trellis will age to a soft gray.

Whether you're starting to build a new landscape from scratch or just tweaking an established garden, I hope these ideas will help stimulate your landscape plans for the coming season.  Thanks for visiting!

Last summer, when I attended the annual Wheat Ridge Garden Tour, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to explore a beautifully designed and built modernist landscape.  The site is challenging; a sloping corner lot with a "built-over/walk-out" garage.  The 1950's era home features classic mid-mod geometry and deep roof overhangs.   In a nod to our region, pink flagstone was used as a decorative accent on the facade.

The homeowners worked with Los Angeles based landscape architect, Charles Elliott, and Kevin Bound of the local landscape design-build firm, Artscapes, to get a simple, elegant, low maintenance design and high quality installation.

Slopes were terraced with flagstone retaining walls and filled with colorful plantings, making access to both the front entry and the backyard most welcoming:

The backyard features multiple play areas for the family's young children.

A concrete "sport court" (in the foreground), a play structure with soft landing (upper right), and just enough level lawn area means lots of play space for everyone.

Distinctive dining and lounging areas are joined by a "soft" patio.

A platform deck floats over the sloping grade and minimizes damage to tree roots. Use a bunch grass (like turf-type tall fescue) for this type of planting rather than a sod forming grass (like Kentucky bluegrass) for lower maintenance (less trimming).

The original flagstone patio features vintage furniture, too!

The use of the cast concrete squares throughout the landscape is a nice unifying element — and a much more economical choice than cut flagstone.  They serve as a practical surface for stepping stones, and a decorative accent in larger areas of gravel mulch.

The limited plant palette and row plantings enhance the geometry of the house and make for lower maintenance, too.

Purple-blue is the key color for the entry garden, filled with xeric lavender, bluemist spirea, grasses, and mugo pine.

For those of you considering a minimalist, modern style, remember these key concepts:

• proper scale
• very limited palette of hardscape materials, harmonious to home
• geometric shapes for planting beds and hard surface areas
• limited palette of plant material

Thanks to the Mead family for sharing their beautiful, distinctive landscape with us!

I'm a bit behind the curve in writing about garden trends for 2013.  Probably because I'm not a trendy kinda person.  I'm more about quality classics; things worth investing in that I can enjoy for the long haul. So I just have two words for you today regarding "trends" because I think this idea is a culmination of current gardening passions, low-stress lifestyles, and low-water realities: edible natives.

Forget about boiled aspen bark and cattail roots. I'm talking about easily accessible berries, nuts, and foliage that you can toss in with your breakfast cereal or dinner salad, cook up into a sweet pie or jam, or decoct into a refreshing beverage. These are plants that are available at better nurseries / garden centers along Colorado's Front Range and are already being used in gardens and landscapes of all sizes.  My list focuses on woody plants — those that form the structure of the garden and are your greatest investment.

Nuts
Gambel oak, Quercus gambelii (nuts ground into a flour or meal)
Pinyon pine, Pinus edulis

Berries, best sweetened and cooked
Boulder raspberry, Rubus deliciosus
Golden currant, Ribes aureum

Chokecherry, Prunus virginiana

Sand cherry, Prunus bessei

'Pawnee Buttes' dwarf form of Prunus besseyi

Buffaloberry, Shepherdia argentea

Berries, sweetened for a lemonade-like beverage
Three-leaf sumac, Rhus triloba

Smooth sumac, Rhus glabra

Berries, fresh or dried
Serviceberry, Amelanchier utahensis is the native variety, A. canadensis is available commercially

Are there more choices? You bet. Native grape (Vitus riparia) hawthorns, thimbleberry and elderberry, not to mention all the perennials and herbs (often considered weeds) like horehound (Marrubium vulgare), mint, and chicory. These plants aren't as readily available for purchase, but might be fun to plan a foraging trip around.

Designing a landscape with edible natives means understanding the growing conditions necessary to keep the plants healthy, and combining them in ways to best show off their growth habits, foliage textures and  colors.
Have you been growing edible native plants in your yard?  I'd love to hear about it!

little bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparum

'Moonshine' yarrow dusted with snow on a frigid winter day.

That's a darn big name for a sweet little sedum!  The common name, Chinese mountain stonecrop, is just as long, but not quite such a mouth full.  This low growing evergreen is fairly new to my garden; I planted it in a tough spot between the street and driveway just a few years ago.  It's flourished on neglect, crummy lean soil, and little water.

The color show is spectacular in late spring when red stems emerge from the rich green foliage and explode with bright, yellow flowers and red bracts.  The overall effect is a multi-colored WOW!

The succulent foliage hangs tough during the summer, looking fresh and green.  Don't you love those cute serrated edges?

And if you leave the flowers / bracts to ripen, you'll be rewarded in the fall with this beautiful star-like texture.

Sedum middendorffianum is hardy in USDA zones 4-8 and needs full sun to thrive.  Plant it in a well draining, infertile soil.  Mature size is 4" tall by 12-18" wide.  The plants I've chosen to partner with this sedum include Penstemon pinifolius 'Mersea Yellow', Helictotrichon sempervirens (blue oat grass), and 'Hidcote' English lavender (not shown).

Yucca, Hesperaloe, Russian sage, and blue mist spirea would also work well with this sedum.  I hope you'll give it a try!

Clematis 'Mongolian Gold'

These little seed heads are about the size of a dime...

A summer favorite — classic hollyhocks, Alcea rosea, seen here at Denver Botanic Gardens

Asclepias tuberosa (orange butterfly weed) and friend

Paeonia hybrid, tree peony

 We didn't have many April showers, but May flowers are still in abundance - hurray! The hands-down star of the show is this tree peony.


Although classified as a woody shrub, it typically suffers severe die-back every winter (in my garden) then bounces back to form a 3'x3' shrub with these beautiful, 6-7" diameter blossoms. This is one plant in my garden that I'm willing to provide with a bit of extra water. Every garden needs one or two exotic specimens, right? A gift from a gardening friend many years ago, I'm sorry that I can't recall the specific variety.

Update:  After doing some research, I believe that this is Paeonia suffruticosa 'Kinkaku' or 'Souvenir de Maxime Cornu'

May is also prime time for Iris germanica, bearded iris. There are two fantastic iris farms in the region where you can see scores of varieties in bloom and place your orders directly with the grower for post flowering delivery. Iris 4 U is in the Englewood area, and Long's Gardens is in central Boulder. Always a fun outing and it's nice to support our local farmers, too.  But don't delay, the gardens are only open for a few weeks during the peak blooming season.

White iris & white flowering Cerastium tomentosum make an elegant and xeric combination.

Love the hidden "zebra" stripes here!

Another of my springtime favorites is Centranthus ruber, red valerian or Jupiter's beard.  The rich intensity of color adds vibrancy to both sunny or shaded settings:

A great, water-wise butterfly plant. Deadhead for repeat blooms all summer.

An underused perennial that is also quite drought tolerant is this sweet Verbascum hybrid. It stands about 20-24" tall and blooms for several weeks.

Brightly colored flower spikes above a basal rosette of coarsely textured leaves.

Our native spiderwort, Tradescantia occidentalis, adds a col hit of blue and is happy to reseed itself in the driest garden areas.

This linear, horizontal foliage is a favorite of mine.

Thanks for visiting The Art Garden today, I hope you'll head over to Carol's May Dreams Garden for links to additional garden sites from around the world.

Syringa vulgaris . . . first emotions of love

Caragana microphylla, littleleaf peashrub

This fine textured plant is tough to photograph, but today it's an inspiring waterfall of yellow.  Read more about it here.

Berlandiera lyrata, chocolate flower

Chocoholics, rejoice! This may not look very chocolaty, but the fragrance - oh, my!

This was a banner year for chocolate flower in my garden - it started blooming in June and is still going strong now. It loves poor, dry soil and lots of sunshine. Plant chocolate flower in full sun at the front of the border (it grows 10-20 inches tall) adjacent to a sidewalk or stone path. The warmth from the hard surface seems to enhance and prolong the fragrance of the flowers, and you'll get to enjoy it every time you walk by.

Once established, it needs very little - or no - water, and no fertilizer. Berlandiera is native to the desert southwest and the high plains of Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. It may reseed and naturalize in gardens of USDA zones 4-9.

Chocolate flower was a Plant Select winner in 2004.

No need to diet when you've got Berlandiera - give it a try in your garden!

Not!

This beauty is the flowering stalk of Agave Gracillipes, Guadalupe Mountains century plant. Although native to Texas and New Mexico, this specimen is growing - quite happily! - in one of the rock gardens at Timberline Gardens in Arvada (Denver metro), Colorado.



Timberline Gardens carries several varieties of agave, including the two that I profiled in an earlier post here. 

These beautiful, sculptural plants are wonderful assets to the garden, as long as you can provide them with the right growing conditions: sun, heat, and dry soil (especially in the winter).

Great plant combination! Ephedra equisetina, Zauschneria garrettii, and Nessella tenuissima