Billows of rouge-y crab apples and hints of chartreuse lining the willow canopy keep drawing my gaze away from the gritty streets of my town into the built environments of the backyards.
It’s an old town with the marks of many generations of gardeners stamped indelibly in fences and buildings and beds. Outhouses have been repurposed as chicken coops and sheds for mowers, shovels and rakes. Paneless French doors have been integrated as gates. Bowling balls mark borders. Rowboat ribs are used to rig a hoop house.
The trees are the most aged elements of the landscape, but like their human caretakers, those, too, cede to successive generations.
In my friend Sheryl’s yard, shaded by an ancient weeping willow, new plantings have begun to soften the ambitious formal hardscape that replaced the crazy-quilt meadow left behind by her hippie predecessor.
Back beyond a curvaceous mountain birch, branches of a still nimble Japanese maple and its juniper compatriot are being shaped and trained with twine and weights, giving intentional form to the young trees trimmed in blood red and sage. She’s making her own temporal mark in the garden, lasting and yet impermanent.
Dana Coffield, The Denver Post
