Blog

It's snowdrop time again! Surely, no plant is more intimately associated with winter flowering (okay, okay--Christmas roses may be!), and none have developed such an enthusiastic folowing: there are

When you decide to become a member of Denver Botanic Gardens, you might be thinking about the many visits you will enjoy with friends and family: enjoying the Orchid Showcase and the Boettcher

Yes, Virginia...pampas grass ( Cortaderia selloana) does indeed grow in Denver...although not in great numbers. Observant visitors will have noticed them dotted here and there at the York Street

With well over 800,000 visitors a year, Denver Botanic Gardens can hardly be considered much of a secret--except maybe in winter. Visitors expect to be dazzled by Blossoms of Light, so they flock here

How easy it is to be lulled into complacency in the depths of winter when our attention is distracted by snowpack and driving conditions. We appear to have forgotten just how long and hot last summer

Xeriscape sometimes summons images of oceans of gravel and harsh, stickly, pointy plants that stab, slash and terrorize homeowner associations. A primrose? Really? Well, there are even primroses that

First of all, it's not really a rose. Helleborus niger is now put in its own family (Helleboraceae), although still allied with the buttercups. Although seemingly innocent with that ghostly whiteness

You have to be a real Scrooge not to love Poinsettia this time of year (and it's OK to say "Poinsetta" in my opinion!)...that RED--it's a red even redder than Santa's suit when Mrs. Claus brings it

With this remarkable string of warm days in November, we can hardly be blamed for thinking summertime, and summertime is fast approaching in the foothills of South Africa, where the spectacular genus

Every so often a plant comes along that surprises you: I never thought one had to "improve" the ubiquitous and abundant blue gramma grass that occupies almost every patch of prairie remnant left

With the summer heat finally having subsided (after setting new records for the number of +90-degree days), Denver’s water use has started to wane. Landscapes that had relied on irrigation through the

The fruit is strangely lurid. Medlar is a European tree in the Rose Family that somehow exudes an air of strangeness. I have read accounts of how terrible it is to taste fruit before hard frost: we