Denver Botanic Gardens

Today we enjoyed a full day at Denver Botanic Garden. We were met by Dan Johnson, the Associate Director of Horticulture and Curator of the Native Plants collection. He showed us the regionally-inspired habitat gardens, including the Ponderosa Border and Bristlecone Border, which feature their namesake pines: Pinus ponderosa and Pinus aristata.  Recent weather events have been tough on many trees in the Garden and around Denver. Last November, temperatures plummeted from around 65 F to -10 F in 36 hours! In May, a snow after some of the trees had leafed out caused more damage. Most recently, two hailstorms have damaged trees and smaller plants alike.




The Bristlecone border

 

The Plains Garden is burned every three to four years

 

Next, we met Katy Wieczorek, Greenhouse Horticulturist, who showed us DBG's greenhouse complex with 12 separate houses, many of which are viewable by the public. The separate houses allow for many different growing conditions for orchid, tropical, aquatic and other collections. Tissue culture is used for hard to propagate plants, including Calochortus.

The aquatic greenhouse

Mike Kintgen, curator of the Alpine collection, showed us the Rock Alpine Garden, the South African Plaza and the Children's Garden.

A view of the Rock Alpine Garden

Saxifraga, Primula and dwarf Salix grow in a shady, north-facing tufa bed in the Rock Alpine Garden.
 

The very impressive Children's Garden is a rooftop garden, located on top of the parking garage and allows kids the chance to explore a sampling of Colorado's ecosystems.



Crevice gardens offer an amazing display, but also function to hold the green roof substrate in place.

Lunch with some of our DBG staff tour guides, from L to R: Mariel, Inna Filatova, Vladimir Shatko, Rebecca Huft, Dan Johnson and Mike Kintgen.

Rebecca Huft, the Manager of Conservation Programs, toured us through the Conservation Genetics lab, herbarium and the Garden's new Science Pyramid. Through the Center for Plant Conservation, DBG sponsors 60 rare plant species. Their goal is to have germination information and seeds collected for all of these species and to make this information available to the public.

 

 

 

 

 






    Interactive displays in the Science Pyramid connects visitors to the Garden's research projects

 

 

We ended the day with a tour of the Japanese Garden by its curator Ebi Kondo. This garden is unique in that it uses native Colorado plants in the design, including Pinus ponderosa. It was designed by Koichi Kawana, who also designed the Japanese Garden at Mobot.

 

 

 

 A view of the Japanese Garden

 

 

Ebi gave us a tour of the teahouse, explaining the symbolic nature of its entry gardens.

 

 



 Rabbits are much cuter when they are just munching on turf!