If a landscape doesn’t drain, it’s mainly a pain. George and Jean Dennis can testify.
The retired couple bought their Park Hill house in 2008, after it had been vacant for six months. A large, broken tree was leaning against the roof of the structure, built in 1911, and a second tree was diseased.
The basement filled with water every downpour.
“The weeds were chest high,” George said. “And the house would have been bulldozed” if the real estate market hadn’t been so desperate back then.
Seven years later, after literally tons of work the couple mostly did themselves, the yard, with its metal fences and verdant, fine-fescue turf, is a showplace.
Each spring, the Dennises offer divided perennials to neighbors for free. Torch lilies salute the porch’s stone lions, pointing their conical blooms to the sky in shades of orange sherbet shading to lemon and cream. Catmint sprawls and “May Night” salvia buzzes with pollinators. A small apple tree might actually bear fruit come fall.
Even better, not a single drop of rain has found its way into the basement. The down side? Some of the xeric plants are sulking at the wet weather, Jean said.
“Our neighbors thought we were nuts,” George says of the reclamation project. “Now, we’re looking for a support group for DIYers.”
Gutters, rocks, plants
So how does one take a property from serious drainage problems to neighborhood asset? First, gutters — the house didn’t have them. Once the gutters were installed, long downspouts helped direct the flow away from the home’s foundation, but didn’t do a complete job.
So George installed drainage through concrete levels to the lower areas of the lot, which can almost be described as having a miniature mesa on which the home sits. Or you might think of it as a square wedding cake. He also had a boulder drilled to create a rock fountain to draw birds. He wrapped two sides of the house with a ribbon of landscape fabric topped with river rock.
Then a contractor came to erase the existing landscaping, which consisted of little more than half a Dumpster full of black plastic (George knows the amount because he rued agreeing to dispose of it himself) and bark mulch.
The couple grew the fine-fescue lawn, which uses 30 percent less water than Kentucky bluegrass, entirely from seed, mulching it with a thick layer of straw to keep it moist.
“I wanted a lawn, but I didn’t want to mow on a slope,” George says, so the couple bought 55 tons of roughly breadbox-size rocks — three truckloads’ worth — and simply dumped each one where it fell on the slopes that surround the house, stopping where the ground leveled off and the turf took over again.
Week by week, the concentric squares of the lot took shape. Jean planted xeric flowering plants, ornamental grasses, coneflowers, columbines and hardy hibiscuses among the rocks, mulching them with pea gravel.
Then on the outside of the iron fence, they planted a preplanned garden designed by Lauren Springer Ogden. Make that 10 preplanned gardens, all bought from High Country Gardens in Santa Fe before that retail greenhouse shuttered.
“Stuffing all the plants into the Prius was a bit of a trick,” George said. Back in Colorado, they used a power auger to dig the 300 holes for the plants, getting it done in just a couple of weekends. Patches of Jupiter’s beard alternate with Rocky Mountain and Elfin Pink penstemon, the sprawling catmint, agastaches, artemisia and dianthus, all mulched with four inches of pea gravel that keeps most weeds relatively controlled.
“Except the bindweed,” Jean said.
Irrigation is handled with drip tubes, low spray heads and a sensor that measures precipitation, temperature and humidity — and means that the couple hasn’t had to water the lawn all spring.
Recent, warm evenings find the Dennises out deadheading that perennial border, guarded by the three Labrador-size rescue dogs that George calls “the brains, the muscle and the conscience.”
The dogs, however, are no help in keeping the plants controlled.
“If I don’t nip off these flowers before they turn pink,” Jean said of the Jupiter’s beard, “they’ll invade the whole yard.”
Susan Clotfelter: 303-954-1078, sclotfelter@denverpost.com or
