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Values and Benefits Harlequin’s Gardens Gives to Colorado Communities
REDUCING TOXICITY AND SUPPORTING LIFE
For 34 years, Harlequin’s Gardens has never used toxic pesticides, fungicides or toxic herbicides. Nor have we ever sold toxic gardening products. What we grow at our nursery will not poison the bees, the pollinators, the beneficial insects, birds, pets, kids or adults. We do not sell any plants that have been treated with Neonicotinoid pesticides.
Our classes and advice and products guide thousands of customers to an organic approach, helping them to be successful without poisons.
Our plants are selected to be pest and disease-resistant, and adapted to Colorado conditions so there is less need for pest-management.
Our example of success with managing our display gardens and our nursery without toxins, inspires thousands of others to avoid poisons.
Eve and Mikl Brawner designed and helped supply and plant the Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse Rose Garden. This was the first public sustainable rose garden in the US. Most people think that roses have to be sprayed with poisons to be successful. For 27 years, we have worked with the Boulder Valley Rose Society to maintain that rose garden organically. A plaque visible to the Farmers Market visitors explains our methods and the garden itself is an advertisement for the success of roses managed organically.
The overall effect of our nursery is to significantly reduce toxicity in Boulder and surrounding counties and to support Life including bees, pollinators, soil organisms, native plants, people etc. This is a valuable benefit.
EDUCATING PEOPLE ABOUT HOW TO BE SUSTAINABLE
For 34 years, Harlequin’s Gardens has practiced sustainability, so our experience and history has guided thousands of people in that direction. Our classes and events all center on sustainability because we have been committed to ecological activities from our beginning.
Classes: Our classes at Harlequin’s Gardens are famous for their highly qualified instructors, for their empowering practicality and for their focus on sustainable and regenerative practices.
Mikl Brawner has also taught classes at local clubs, the Center for Resource Conservation, Denver Botanic Gardens, Rose Societies, the CO. Native Plant Society, Colorado Nursery and Greenhouse Assoc. and Boulder County Co-operative Extension, and home-owner associations.
Mikl has been writing regular articles on sustainable issues for 25 years for the Colorado Gardener magazine, and occasionally for Boulder Home and Garden.
Our educated staff gives advice and guidance on sustainability at the nursery.
The educational website at Harlequin’s Gardens teaches thousands of people.
Our demonstration gardens show how to walk the sustainable talk, saving water and avoiding toxins.
Our extensive educational outreach promoting sustainability and resilience is a powerful message teaching thousands of gardeners.
WATER CONSERVATION
The first xeriscape garden at Harlequin’s Gardens was planted in 1986. That garden has been watered between 3 to 7 times a year for the last 39 years. There are 6 other xeriscape gardens at the nursery and none are watered more than once a week, most less. These demonstrate the plants, methods, irrigation approaches and some possible styles of creating truly water-saving landscapes in Colorado. These gardens have been the only public xeriscape gardens in Boulder for many years.
We have taught classes in xeriscape both at Harlequin’s Gardens and for the Center for Resource Conservation and the ProGreen Conference. In addition Mikl writes articles about low-water plants and gardens both for the Colorado Gardener and for the Harlequin’s Gardens website.
We use the most water-efficient watering methods at our nursery: 95% hand watering and 5% drip and hose sprinkler.
We craft or custom order potting mixes that require far less water than standard potting mixes.
Our plant selection is focused on plants that are well-adapted to Colorado conditions and therefore require less irrigation.
By practicing water conservation, demonstrating xeriscape, teaching water-conserving practices, and offering mostly low-water plants, Harlequin’s Gardens has saved the community a LOT of water.
NATIVE PLANTS: PROMOTION AND SUPPLY
For 34 years we have specialized in natives. Long before natives became popular, Harlequin’s Gardens was propagating, selling and planting natives in our demonstration gardens. Where else in Boulder can people go to see mature specimens of native shrubs, trees and perennials?
We give yearly tours and classes in native plants.
We have one of the best selections of native plants in the region. Through our 34 years in business, our plants have helped to replace the habitat lost through development. We have always propagated native plants, some from local seed to multiply hard-to-find varieties and to increase native diversity in urban landscapes. This supports native populations of bees, birds and beneficials.
We support the Colorado Native Plant Society, People and Pollinators Action Network, and the Rock Garden Society.
Our demonstration gardens have been recognized by the Habitat Heroes program of the Audubon Society and by the National Wildlife Federation.
LOCAL FOOD: PROMOTION, EDUCATION, AND SUPPLY
Our website and selection at the nursery of a wide selection of heirloom and locally successful varieties of vegetables have inspired thousands of customers to get interested in and try their hand at growing their own fresh, nutritious food.
Besides our organic vegetable starts, we also offer asparagus, potato, onion, garlic, and organic herb starts.
We also provide: strawberry, raspberry, grape, elderberry, currant, gooseberry, blackberry, and other berries
And we provide Colorado-adapted fruit trees of varieties that are both successful and disease-resistant.
We teach classes in many aspects of growing food at home.
Inspiring and empowering our local community to grow their own nutritious food and providing them with the resources to really do it has increased food security and resiliency in Boulder County.
RENEWABLE ENERGY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION
Mikl designed a fossil fuel-free greenhouse in 1991 that has never been heated more than 5 nights in any year (with a small electric heater)
None of our greenhouses and growing structures use propane or natural gas and only a little electricity
We use only organic fertilizers which means a much smaller carbon footprint and much less emissions of nitrous oxide.
We source most of our plants and soil products within 50 miles from Boulder. This saves tremendous transportation emissions.
Our carbon footprint is far smaller than any other nursery in the area.
SUPPORT LOCAL COMPOSTING, RECYCLING, AND REUSING
We sell locally made compost from A-1 Organics; fertilizer and compost from a Platteville egg farm, local dairy cow manure, local mushroom compost, local raised bed mix, and locally made alfalfa fertilizer.
We bag local composts and other soil products usually only available in bulk truck loads.
We compost local leaves, and make Compost Tea.
Nearly all our buildings are made from 50% reused materials.
We take used plastic nursery pots from our customers and reuse or recycle them.
We bag local composts and mulches in heavy plastic bags and pay a refund when the bags are returned in order to reduce plastic in the landfills.
Our practices over 34 years have had a significant influence on nutrient cycling of our local wastes, benefitting local gardens and reducing wastes going into local landfills.
CULTIVATING RESILIENCY
Harlequin’s Gardens has helped residents for 34 years to create landscapes that will survive watering restrictions while reducing water use NOW.
We have been inspiring and helping people to integrate nature into city infrastructure and homes. This increases resiliency by taking carbon from the atmosphere, shading the ground reducing evaporation and shading structures reducing air conditioning; and increasing our quality of life.
Harlequin’s Gardens teaches methods and provides materials to build strong, vibrant topsoils, reducing the need for fertilizers, water and pesticides.
Increasing biodiversity, reducing toxicity in our environment, increasing Food Security and using and demonstrating alternative energies, all support resiliency.
Our Vision: Harlequin’s Strategic Growth for Community Resilience and Regeneration
We would like to launch a creative initiative to strengthen our operations and expand our community service. With your support, we will invest in three key areas that will help Harlequin’s Gardens continue successfully into the future.
1. Plant production Expansion: 40% of funds will go to staff wages and benefits, inventory management, facilities improvements.
- Grow and propagate more of our own plants, reducing costs and improving quality. Concentrate on natives, water-wise, organic food plants and Colorado-adapted plants that thrive with fewer inputs.
- Expand our current wholesale operation to serve Harlequin’s retail business and landscapers, municipalities and non-profits.
- Invest in infrastructure to support production, efficiency and health
- Continue to make our own potting soils and provide healthy soil products to our customers so plants will continue to be strong and healthy once they leave Harlequin’s.
2. Enhanced Customer Benefit: 30% of funds
- Develop improved marketing and educational systems based on what our community really wants and needs to meet future climate challenges and gardening trends: like more natives and changing lawns to gardens.
- Create an improved website; offer more empowering classes
- Expand our store’s products of tools, non-toxic pest management products, smart gifts, books and organic gardening supplies
3. Operational Excellence: 30% of Funds
- Upgrade our inventory management systems to reduce waste and improve planning, including bar codes and better organization
- Invest in training for our team
- Invest in intermediate technology production equipment: low cost/low carbon, low energy requiring,
Long-term Investment: $100,000 (from our profits, grants and other sources) for Long-term Sustainability
Your Investment will:
- Keep our knowledgeable team employed year-round, retaining expertise and experience. Continue paying Mikl and Eve to stay involved with the business.
- Fund concrete improvements that make us more efficient, effective and climate resilient
- Position us for sustainable growth rather than just survival
- Ensure we can continue providing the plants, products and expertise that will benefit Colorado gardeners in eco-logical ways.
- Expand diverse habitats and populations of native plants, pollinator and beneficial insects, birds, butterflies and healthy humans.
- Support a cooperative-styled business that encourages profit-sharing and power-sharing
- Provide empowering education and helpful guidance for customers, new and experienced.
- Provide products to support organic gardening
- Add, improve and maintain educational demonstration gardens
- Ensure the continuity of Harlequin’s decades of supporting the community and the environment. It will take far less investment to keep Harlequin’s Gardens going than to start something equivalent from scratch.