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| Rhus aromatica blazing in the Bonsai garden |
Future shock: I'm steeped in Southern Hemisphere in New Zealand: the quotation is from Keats' "Ode to Autumn" and the pictures were all taken Friday, October 28 in about 45 minutes a week ago in Denver. The jolt of going from high autumn to high spring is...well...bracing!
Of course, they got jumbled when I uploaded them, so there's no story line except to say that the light was terrific, and Denver Botanic Gardens never ceases to amaze and delight me. I took a
whole other set of pictures in different gardens a week or so ago--add these to those, and then imagine another few sets, and you can begin to appreciate the aesthetic overload I've experienced for 36 years (going on 37).
Suddenly there's a superabundance of mums (I believe they're Korean mums) in various gardens: splendid!
Another view of
Rhus aromatica in fall attire.
ditto
It's been warm enough that the bonsai are still outside posing for us...
Amelanchier in a compact form gussied up for Halloween.
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| I love the yellow of autumn gingko leaves. |
Seedpods on lilies. a good thing!
We lost Ann Montague, a masterful gardener, almost two months ago--but her gardens still blaze with glory.
Dan Johnson, Associate Director of Horticulture, never ceases to amaze me with his designs--the plaze outside Marnie's Pavilion was over the top this year...
A little bed in the Parking Structure--the
Acer grandidentatum coloring nicely...
Helianthus annuus along the street--love the contrast to the purple grape foliage behind (excuse the cone!)
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| I love 'Color Guard' Yucca! |
Using tender Echeverias for bedding out is cruel in a way--but this one is so pretty I suspect it will be rescued. No frost yet! This one is
Echeveria gigantea.
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| Aster tataricum in the grand O'Fallon Border. |
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| Some years the autumn Aconites don't make it--but this year they've escaped the frost. Either A. carmichaelii or A. wilsonii. |
Tree Yucca and hollyhocks: kinda a Denver thing!
Helianthus maximiliani in its prime...
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| Sprorobolus heterolepis |
This tiny Sacaton has to be one of the most magnificent and underutilized native grasses-it takes on a russet color in the fall I find irresistible.
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| Sporobolus heterolepis |
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| Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) |
Still working on replacing hail damaged panels of the Conservatory...
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| Salvia darcyi blooming away for its sixth or seventh month |
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| Stachys byzantina 'Primrose Heron' |
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| Watersmart Gardeb in Autumn splendor |
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| One of Dan Johnson's blue Salvia in Watersmart: it's been hardy for some time I believe... |
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| Opuntia phaeacantha |
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| Goniolimon tataricum in tumbleweed mode. |
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| Love the autumn colors and textures in Watersmart. |
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| A hardy white Salvia greggii |
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| Zauschneria arizonica (I know I know, its really an epilobium) |
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| The tunnel surrounded by Dan Johnson's extravaganza... |
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| Solanum sp. (forgot which one!) |
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| Crocus speciosus coming up through Lamium |
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| The new Steppe garden: African section |
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| Erodium absinthum ssp. armenum |
I featured this at length
a few blogs ago, but can't resist showing it again. One of our best plants! In the Asian steppe garden.
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| Erodium absinthum ssp. armenum |
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| I love the rosettes on Arctotis adpressa |
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| Vignette from African Steppe garden |
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| Ditto |
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| Hardy dwarf Pampas on the Patagonian Steppe garden |
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| Autumn yellow in the Woodland Mosaic garden (a sea of Fritillaria ssp. in the spring) |
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| Tricyrtis hirta peaking... |
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| Tricyrtis hirta |
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| Tricyrtis hirta |
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| Tricyrtis hirta |
So hard to capture the magic of toad lilies...
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| Giant Aconites--of the carmichaelii type. |
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| Acer palmatum (that survived the November holocaust of 2014 which killed almost all our Japanese maples and cherries) |
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| Engelmannia peristenia |
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| The Potager |
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| Hot peppers in the Potager. |
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| Chrysanthemums are new in the Japanese garden: love them! |
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| The sempiternal Plains garden. |
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| Plains garden |
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| Liatris punctata in seed in the Plains garden |
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| Sorbus scopulina |
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| Picea mariana |
I planted the black spruce in 1999 to commemorate a trip to Alaska--and now it's squeezed between Arizona cypress..oh well. Global warming in action!
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| Sapindus drummondii--our loveliest and least appreciated native tree |
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| Another new of the native Rowan |
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| The rock garden in fall glory |
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| A tetraneuris--not sure which in the Rock Alpine Garden |
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| New crevice garden |
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| Muhlenbergia reverchonii in the meadow. |
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| Cotoneaster apiculata 'Little Gem' living up to its nbame |
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| The birch planted itself...and glad we left it. |
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| Malva mauritanicus (a darker form of sylvestris) |
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| More native Sorbus in the Rock Alpine Garden |
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| Euonymus in the RAG |
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| Salvia heldreichii is beautiful in foliage as well as bloom (in the RAG) |
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| Crevice garden cushions... |
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| Birds and bees garden in autumn color |
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| Aronia melanocarpa |
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| Annual Arctotis |
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| Cutting garden |
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| Cutting garden |
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| Joe Pye Weed |
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| Plant Select garden |
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| Entrance to the Japanese Garden |
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| Phlox grayi reblooming in the Children's garden |
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| Teucrium cossonii in the Childrens Garden |
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| Crevice Garden the Childrens Garden |
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| Mexicali penstemon in the Childrens Garden |
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| Crevice garden. |
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| Polygonum affine in the Children's garden. |
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| Children's garden |
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| Apache plume |
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| Samaras on Acer tataricum |
As an award for getting to the very bottom, here's the loveliest poem about autumn!
John Keats (1795-1821)
TO AUTUMN.
1.
SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
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