Thursday, January 23, 2020

Denver Botanic Gardens, let's go! Chapter Four of Five, rocks...

Back to the DBG! Today we're in the far corner visiting the Rock Alpine Garden as well as the Cactus and Succulent House.

Rocks were a major theme in all of the gardens we visited during the Denver Fling. I thought they were wonderful but think a few other "Flingers" may have burnt out on them.

Naturally, there were a lot of crevice gardens.

But there were also lots of boulder-sized rocks. That's the Cactus and Succulent House in the distance.

Closer...

This was the only image I took inside the house. It was full of screaming children, I had to leave.

Back outside and there are...more rocks!

I think that's Yucca harrimaniae, or maybe Yucca nana, blooming to the right of the rocks.

As you've no doubt gathered from my previous posts from the Denver (+Fort Collins, +Boulder) Fling, there were also a lot of sempervivum.

All grown perfectly.

Here's a garden on top of a rock.

Those are tough plants.

Another style of crevice garden.

Acaena sp.

Oh, and there were saxifraga too...

So many rocks. I think I need more rocks...

Weather Diary, Jan 22: Hi 47, Low 45/ Precip .07

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12 comments:

  1. I was definitely one of those who had had enough of rocks by the end of it. All the gardens started to look alike to me eventually, and it's hard now to differentiate them from each other, which may also be a factor of how many there were each day. I do love your shots of plants growing in very little soil on top of big rocks and in their crevices. I have a handful of rocks like that with sedums growing on them, I think of them as a variation on a fern table, but sunny and dry.

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    1. I was definitely in the "too many gardens in a day" camp. It's such a delicate balance.

      I wish I had a couple of big rocks like those with the gardens on top of them.

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  2. Must admit I am less of a fan of crevice gardens than a regular rock garden. Must be the linearity of the rocks I find kind of artificial. I like the haphazard array of rounded rocks with plants more and a little bit of crevice like your one photo showed.

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    1. There was definitely something for everyone at the DBG.

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  3. I'm glad you had an opportunity to come back and make another round of the garden after the Fling stop. This post is a good reminder that I still have a healthy number of rocks I can use on my back slope to get creative - the only impediment being the problem of hauling them down there.

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    1. I'm picking a line of about 30 strapping young gentleman to hand off the rocks to each other, thereby working them right on down the hillside. Don't you have a local high school football team you could hire?

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  4. I love Rocks and crevice gardens too but like everything else, balance is the key. 'Can't See the Forrest for the Trees' is an expression that comes to mind occasionally. Some crevice gardens done so well it looks like mother nature made it. A touch of pink in the saxifrage blooms is awesome. Mine are white only.

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    1. Can't see the garden for the rocks? Nah, doesn't work as well does it?

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  5. Rocks are one thing New England has LOTS of! I try to use them where the opportunity presents itself...why haul them off when you can make a garden around them? I found a similar saxifrage last year that bloomed its head off for more than a month. I'm hoping it makes it through the winter, fingers crossed.

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    1. Fingers crossed! The only rocks I dig up here are small round river rocks, and those get reburied as agave drainage support.

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  6. I was at DBG years ago and thought it was fabulous then. I am really enjoying seeing what it looks like now. The rock/crevice gardens are spectacular. I saw the LaBrea Tar Pits in 1971 but can't really remember what that experience was like. I was out of college so you would think I paid attention as it was a must see for my traveling friend and me. . .

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    1. It would be fun to see how the Tar Pits have changed over the time since you visited.

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