We all know the value of filling our gardens with native plants. But as we transplant yet another penstemon or columbine seedling, it’s hard not to have a little envy for those other gardeners.
If we lived in England, we’d be coddling our periwinkles or larkspur this time of year. If our villa overlooked the Mediterranean, we’d be pruning our olive trees. If we journeyed to Japan, we’d spend our days raking our sandy ground cover into zenlike patterns.
Although we can’t re-create the climate that makes these gardens flourish, we can re-create the spirit. If you’re yearning to bring a little bit of the old country to your high-country garden, there are various design elements that can transport your hardy Colorado plants into a time zone far away, without ever leaving home.
ENGLISH GARDEN
The traditional vision of an English garden is well-ordered beds divided by symmetrical box hedges. But that style of garden actually died with Queen Victoria. The typical English garden today is one of “glorious disarray,” says Sheila Chaney, owner of The English Gardener, a Lafayette-based garden design company.
Chaney hails from Ipswich, in England’s East Anglia region but has lived in Colorado long enough to design more than 100 gardens. Although some of the plants are different, the informal English style can work just as well in Denver as in Dover, she says.
There are two types of English gardens: cottage and border. Cottage gardens combine vegetables, herbs and flowers in a riotous mishmash. Borders tend to ditch the vegetables in favor of flowering perennials, shrubs and herbs. Chaney prefers curvy, nonlinear beds, with plants close together to form a mass of color.
Key elements include:
Color. Chaney says traditional English garden colors include pink, purple, blue, white and silver, with red and yellow as spot accents. It’s key to consider the seasons when planting so that there is never a bare spot in the bed. Iris, roses and penstemon, for example, can be planted together to provide spring through late summer color, as can peonies and lilies.
Layers of height. Colorado-style English gardens may contain such ornamental trees as crab apples; evergreens such as yews; and flowering shrubs like spirea, daphne, lilac and butterfly bush. Another option is climbing vines including honeysuckle and clematis. Hardscapes include obelisks, birdbaths and stepping-stone paths that weave to a bench.
Roses. Chaney prefers to repeat rose bushes throughout the garden rather than clumping them together. She likes David Austin English roses and the Canadian hardy shrub roses. Some of her favorites: iceberg (white), Othello (red), Gertrude Jekyll (pink) and Abraham Darby (apricot).
Flowering perennials. Plant these in clumps of three, five, seven or nine, depending on the size of the bed. Chaney’s favorites include lady’s mantle, lavender, delphinium, hardy geranium, Siberian iris, dianthus, pincushion flower, sweet William, penstemon, rudbeckia, aster, bleeding heart, peony, columbine, Jacob’s ladder, allium, hollyhock, sedum, Jupiter’s beard, lily, artemisia, lupine, forget-me-nots, narcissus, foxglove, coral bells, tulips, moonshine yarrow, sage and oregano. For groundcover, she likes thyme, Turkish veronica and sweet woodruff.
MEDITERRANEAN COURTYARD GARDENS
Yard space is often at a premium on the crowded Mediterranean coasts of Italy, France, Spain and Greece, but the natives have learned to make do with small yet lush courtyard gardens. Not only can their design elements easily transfer to Colorado, but a surprising number of Mediterranean plants also thrive in our climate.
According to “Hacienda Courtyards” (Gibbs Smith, $39.95), by Karen Witynski and Joe Carr, common courtyard design elements include:
Brick, stone or tile floors. Pavers can be laid close together or interspersed with a ground cover like thyme.
Painted walls. If your courtyard has at least one stone wall, Witynski and Carr advise covering it with lime-based paint to replicate the texture and finish of the walls of old Europe and Mexico. They recommend rich, earthy hues such as orange, brown, terra cotta, yellow and gold from California-based Portola Paints & Glazes, which specializes in lime-based paint.
Water features. Traditionally, these are wall fountains made of stone, but if you have room, consider a small pool with a trickling waterfall. The water is a key component in dispersing the heat in a stone-based courtyard.
Container plants. The Mediterranean Garden Society, based in Greece, lists a variety of native plants that also grow in Colorado, particularly in pots that can be taken inside during the winter. Rosemary, lavender and artemisia all are found in the Mediterranean, along with aloe, yucca, iris, salvia, sage, penstemon, narcissus and yarrow.
Vines are mainstays in Mediterranean courtyards — try the showy trumpet vine for a touch of exoticism. Colorado winter- hardy shrubs that grow native in the Mediterranean include broom and viburnum.
JAPANESE GARDEN
The key to a Japanese garden is not a bunch of Buddha statues or miniature pagodas but rather creating a space that is “in balance and in harmony with the environment it’s in,” says landscape architect Martin Mosko, founder of Marpa & Associates in Boulder.
Consequently, a Japanese garden in Colorado would look more like the Rocky Mountains than Mount Fuji. Still, there are certain elements that (quietly) scream “Japanese garden” no matter where the garden is located, says Professor Clifton Olds, creator of The Japanese Garden website for Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.
Olds studies Japanese gardens, which first appeared in the eighth century, and has identified the following common themes:
Rocks. “This is one of the most inescapable elements,” he says. Rocks need to be pleasing to the eye, native and grouped closely together in threes or fives. “(Designs in) even numbers offend the Japanese,” Olds says.
Water. Unless you’re designing a dry garden, which consists only of rocks and crushed granite, you’ll want a shallow pond or a stream with a waterfall, Olds says.
Evergreens. Mosko says that traditionally a Japanese garden is two-thirds pine trees, usually carefully controlled and shaped. Other trees can include maples and bamboo.
Azaleas. Because these flowering shrubs don’t thrive in Colorado, Mosko substitutes daphne, spirea or viburnum.
Asymmetry. “A symmetrical garden seems too mechanical, too designed to the Japanese,” Olds says. “They believe asymmetry induces a sense of tranquility.”
Groundcover. The traditional choice is gravel or moss, Olds says. Mosko swaps low-growing thyme or Turkish veronica for the moss.
Minimal ornamentation. “One of the problems with Americans building Japanese gardens is they think they have to have everything in them — Buddhas, bridges, lanterns — but that deprives the garden of its serenity and simplicity,” Olds says.
In Japan, people often don’t even walk in their gardens, but admire them from a nearby pagoda, Mosko says. If they do venture into the garden, they sit on the ground rather than on a bench or chair, he says.
Freelance writer Vicky Uhland’s Lafayette yard includes a tranquil Asian-style garden and pond.
