In late winter, crocus are the first flowers to appear in my landscape.

While working in the yard yesterday, I realized I had reached a goal I set many years ago. It occurred to me that something’s blooming in my landscape nearly 10 months of each year. Not bad for a Colorado garden.

From the first crocus that appears in late January to the last of the New Mexico sunflowers in October, I can look out one of my windows and see a a flower or shrub in bloom.

After the crocus appear I look for small yellow and purple Iris Reticulata near the driveway in February. In March, the daffodils begin to display their varied colors, shapes and sizes. April means shrubs come into bloom like the Nanking Cherry, Serviceberry and ‘Pawne Buttes’ Sand Cherry.

Not everyone is a landscape designer at heart, that’s why pre-planned gardens were invented.

Thanks to garden centers, like High Country Gardens in Santa Fe, design-challenged gardeners can have a blooming beautiful garden by placing an order and following a planting diagram.

The Summer Dreams garden, is a pre-planned garden perfect for a sunny 5′ x 5′ space. Designers selected low-maintenance perennials that work well in just about any type of soil.

Plants in this assortment include Blue Fortune Hyssop (Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’), Fireworks Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa ‘Fireworks’), Goldstrum Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’), Purple Cone Flower (Echinacea purpurea), Rozzane Perennial Geranium (Geranium ‘Rozzane’), and Meadow Blazing Star (Liatris ligulistylus).

In addition to summer beauty, the perennials in this selection are designed to attract bees and butterflies to the garden.

Pre-planned gardens like these take the guesswork out of what to plant and where to plant it. Planting diagrams and care sheets are usually included in the package.

These Teddy Bear sunflowers aren’t just fuzzy fun, they serve an important function by attracting bees to the garden.

Last summer my garden overflowed with a special kind of sunshine. Dozens of sunflowers greeted me each day and the variety of their cheerful sunny faces was dazzling.

There were the large single heads of ‘Skyscraper’ that soared on stalks almost 10 feet tall. These Frisbee-sized flowers were balanced by the shorter, multi-branched varieties that bloomed all summer long.

In October, long after the rest of the garden went into hibernation, the small yellow-gold blooms of ‘Maximillian’ steadily climbed upward on sturdy stems.

For centuries the Helianthus annuus has provided food, medicine and artistic inspiration. But even Vincent van Gogh would be surprised to see that sunflowers are no longer limited to the familiar golden palette. Gardeners now select from a large assortment of ornamentals with colorful names like ‘Ruby Eclipse’, ‘Lemon Queen’, ‘Sundown’, ‘Terracotta’ and ‘Italian White’.

Penstemon grandiflorus Prairie Jewel lights up my spring xeriscape.

I wasn’t sold on Prairie Jewel the first year I planted it. It grew too tall and I didn’t like the way it towered over the other plants in the garden. It also leaned over and I couldn’t prop it up.

I hate to admit it, but at the end of that first season, I pulled it up.

Fortunately for me, it had already reseeded itself in another bed and made an appearance the following spring. I’m so glad it did. It must have received too much water in its first planting because it sure doesn’t get much moisture in its new spot.

The plant starts as a clump of silvery leaves and then the flower spikes shoot up from the center. The tubular flowers are very attractive to bees because there’s a nice landing pad that directs them straight to the pollen.

The Denver Daisy was selected to commemorate Denver’s 150th birthday last year.

One of the big disappointments in my garden this spring was looking for the return of the Denver Daisies I planted last year. Because this plant is a Rudbeckia, and the progency of Rudbeckia hirta (a Colorado native) and Rudbeckia ‘Prairie Sun’, I assumed it was a perennial and would make an appearance again this year.

It didn’t pop up with the other perennials in two different flower beds, but I kept looking. I had grown fond of this plant since it was so hard to start from seed and because its flowers were large and beautiful; golden petals streaked with dark red. Once they were established, they were easy to care for, too.

Many free seed packets were distributed throughout the Metro area with the goal of gardens of these daisies ready to welcome visitors to the Democratic National Convention.

Plants have to be tough to survive in my no-water garden.

Although you couldn’t tell by the storms we’ve had over the last few days, rainfall can be scarce around here in spring and summer. That’s why I started a no-water garden bed in one corner of my front yard.

This bed faces south and gets full sun most of the day. To grow here, plants have to be able to survive on only natural precipitation because I rarely water this bed.

My no-water garden helps me balance my need for colorful blooms with the need to conserve water in my landscape. Last June I planted two Mesa Verde ice plants I picked up at the Plant Select annual meeting to test their endurance.

The plants start as mats of succulent, evergreen leaves and yesterday I noticed that one plant is blooming. Its salmon-pink flowers have a shiny, almost iridescent quality to them.

Create special holiday memories with this easy-to-prepare recipe for scones.

One of my favorite special occasion breakfast recipes can be made with ingredients you probably already have in your pantry.

It takes just a few minutes to mix the batter and pop the pan into the oven for a delicious better-than-bakery treat.

Ingredients for Breakfast Scones

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup butter, margarine or transfat-free shortening (or a combination of these)
• ½ cup milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• ¾ cup raisins

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease a 9-inch pie plate. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in butter, margarine or transfat-free shortening with a fork or pastry blender under mixture is well combined. Add milk, eggs, and raisins and stir until dry ingredients are moist—mixture will be sticky.

My Saturday plant sale drew neighbors and passers-by to see what kinds of bargains they could dig up.

Next year–bell peppers.

That was one plant in demand that I hadn’t considered when I started my vegetable seeds in March. I had planted 12 different varieties of tomatoes and three kinds of peppers, but not one single bell.

But that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm for my first neighborhood plant sale. We were up early on Saturday morning and it was fun driving John around to place the signs he had painted the night before. Then we raced home to set up before the first buyers appeared in the driveway.

The plant rack was loaded with standard tomato fare,  like Celebrity and Red Cherry tomatoes, but I also had grape-sized Sprites and Giant Belgiums on the shelf. A box was full of unusual varieties like Marianna’s Peace, Dulcia, Paul Robeson and Hana. Peppers included Jalapeno, Paprika and Poblano.

Make plans now to visit the Heritage Rose Garden at Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery in June.

If you love old roses, you need to be on the Heritage Rose Foundation’s annual tour of the rose gardens at Denver’s Fairmount Cemetery June 13. The cemetery is located at 430 S. Quebec St., and is home to at least 300 antique garden roses of almost 60 different varieties. The fact that the majority of these old roses are over 100 years old is a testament to their hardiness.

Even if you can’t make the tour, please find time to visit the area on your own sometime in June–you won’t be disappointed. Located on a hill near a large white gazebo, the Heritage Rose Garden, the roses were  transplanted here from other areas of the cemetery by the Fairmount Heritage Rose Foundation volunteers.

Most of the plants are 10 feet tall and 6 feet deep and loaded with pink, white or red fragrant blooms. It’s a spectacular sight.

If you don’t have room in your landscape for a conventional rock garden, why not plant one in a container?


While visiting the Denver Botanic Gardens one day, I spotted several container rock gardens along one sidewalk. These ceramic pots were planted with some of the 400 different species of sedum and they inspired me to create my own miniature rock garden.

Sedum are tough plants that like to be planted in sunny spots with well-drained soil. They are easily propagated by cuttings and division. Most species make great groundcovers and many are cold hardy.

Because I had several varieties of sedum already growing throughout my landscape, it was easy to go from plant to plant pinching a little from this one and some from that one.

I took an old terra cotta pot, buried a few rocks so that only half of each rock was showing and then tucked the plants around the rocks and planted some cuttings around the edges.