Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,
Welcome to Spring, to Harlequin’s Gardens and to another opportunity to mix your molecules with soil biology and partner with nature. Those of us who garden reap tremendous benefits, no matter how experienced or inexperienced we are. It’s no wonder gardeners are healthier and more cheerful.
The 21st Century is an exciting time to be gardening because we are outgrowing the petroleum mentality of solving food and landscaping problems with chemicals and poisons. We are learning how to support Life with biological solutions. It is said that we are now in the Age of Biology because our biggest problems are biological and our most successful solutions are biological. And the United Nations has designated 2021-2030 the “Decade of Ecosystem Restoration.” Some people aren’t paying attention, but a lot of us have already assumed the job of helping to heal our environment, our people and our planet. Every act of kindness, of support, of nurturing and sharing, helps to uplift some pollinator, some frog, some bird, some microbe, some child, some hungry person, or somebody just like you.
A Few New & ‘New Again’ TOMATOES: 
Every 5 years or so Congress has the opportunity to transform our food system by revising a piece of legislation known as the Farm Bill, which covers everything from supporting farmers to ensuring food security for all. Politicians and local and national advocacy organizations are working to determine how nearly a billion dollars a year will be spent. You can help! 
Two quotations greet me every morning, posted on our bathroom mirror: “Tell me. What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” (poet Mary Oliver) and “I wake up each morning torn between a desire to save the world and a desire to savor the world. This makes it very hard to plan the day.” (author/editor E. B. White). The first inspires me to define my priorities, while the second, which perfectly describes my daily dilemma, allows me a little slack and sense of humor in the midst of my personal chaos and the chaos of life on Earth in this time. Perhaps you can take some inspiration and comfort from them, too.
Among the thousands of seedlings that we are propagating is a special new Plant Select® addition: Guernsey Green Juniper, WINDWALKER® Series (Juniperus horizontalis ‘Guernsey Green’). 
And LOTS of HERBS, both Culinary, Medicinal – Many varieties of THYME, LAVENDER, BASIL, MINT, ROSEMARY, SAGE, OREGANO, CHIVES, plus Parsley, French Tarragon, Cilantro, Dill, Fennel, Lemon Balm, Lemon Thyme, Lime Balm, Marjoram,, Lemon Grass, Vietnamese Coriander, Pineapple Sage, Lemon Verbena, Borage, Savory, Lovage, Cutting Celery, Catnip, Calendula, Aloe, Greek Mountain Tea, Comfrey, Echinacea , Feverfew, Lobelia, Valerian, Motherwort, Mullein, Sweet Leaf, Lomatium, Hyssop, Anise Hyssop, Plantain, Clary Sage, Skullcap, Arnica, Sheep Sorrel, Self-Heal, Rue, Mugwort, Wormwood, and more.
Big Foot Mycorrhizae – combines 4 species of mycorrhizae with biochar, worm castings, seaweed, and rock minerals to provide a strong population of plant allies to bring water and nutrients. NEW
ONIONS
Still looking for the Perfect Gifts for Gardeners?
The 2023 calendar marks the eighteenth year that Boulder artist Theresa has been designing, carving and creating her block print scroll calendars. It has become an annual tradition for her to make the calendars, and for many people, a tradition to buy them for themselves and to give as gifts. The theme for this year is some of the many houseplants she, and many people have around their homes. 
As the holiday giving season steadily approaches, we invite you to consider our very special selection of wearable local-artisan creations that range from practical to luxurious, including:
Harlequin’s huge choice of pollinator-supporting Native Perennials-including:
Many Agastaches –Blue Fortune, A. rupestris, A. foeniculum and ‘Ava’
We have 4 featured books, lots of Mikl’s hand-picked Children’s Books, plus an ENORMOUS INFLUX of other new books and puzzles! Our Featured books are:
We know our customers have beautiful gardens (some have even shared them in our 
This week is your last opportunity to pick up unique, thoughtful, useful, delicious and beautiful handmade gifts from local artists and artisans. Some have re-stocked with new additions you may not have seen yet!
We are coming to the end of Harlequin’s 30th year in business and in service to the community. We are so grateful that you have supported us all these years. You have found us in our hidden location, told your friends about us, planted our native flora, xeriscape and pollinator-supporting selections and organic veggie starts, and supported your soil life with our help. This partnership over 30 years has made a difference in our local ecology and in people’s individual lives. Our dedication to organic gardening has been multiplied by thousands of you. 
We are thrilled to announce that a little miracle has occurred, thanks to our amazing network of friends in the community!
In tandem with the close of October, our 2022 Fall Sale will end this Sunday at 5pm. Before then, be sure to take advantage of our Fall Sale Discounts, which can help you achieve your end-of-season gardening goals with plants and soil products that are 30% off! (Sale exceptions listed below.)
Regrettably, we need to let you know that we have had to cancel our 2022 bulb order. We spoke with the company’s shipping director yesterday and she informed us that the containers were still on the ship and had not yet even been placed on the trucks that would take them to distribution centers. When asked if there was any chance our order would reach us by the end of this week, she said ‘No’. With so few days left to sell our large order of bulbs before we close for the season at 5:00 pm on Sunday, October 30th, it no longer makes sense to bring them in. 
We have a wonderful selection of bulbs coming; the problem is they aren’t here yet. And we were just notified yesterday that the broker in Holland failed to notice that our requested delivery date was the first week of September, so our order is packed in a shipping container on the docks in the Netherlands waiting to be loaded onto a slow boat to Michigan. There is simply nothing to be done but wait. We are told that our order will hopefully ship from Michigan in the first week of October.
This is such a nice time of the year to putter in the garden! It’s also a good opportunity to look ahead and amend your planting beds and lawn for Spring 2023. Our Fall Sale Discounts can help you achieve your end-of-season gardening goals with plants and soil products that are 30% off! (Sale exceptions listed below.)
We propagate and grow a lot of great plants here at the nursery, which gives us (and you!) an advantage when the wholesale suppliers run short in mid and late summer. We’re very pleased to have beautiful stock of some highly desirable and hard-to-find shrubs and perennials right now, including some choice native plants, Plant Select® winners, and customer favorites. 
Daylilies are old favorites for good reasons. They are:
Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa) is a majestic, slow-growing tree reaching 60 to 70’ in height and spread, and is typically very long-lived (think 200, 300+ years!). It’s the sort of tree you plant for the benefit of the generations to come. Many oak species don’t thrive in Colorado’s alkaline soils, but Bur Oak is a happy exception. It is also drought-tolerant once established, even in dry clay, and can handle city conditions quite well. Bur Oak’s strong wood and strong, almost right-angled branch connections resist breakage in wind and snow. 
Hardy Geraniums are some of the most versatile an adaptable perennials for our area! Available in many colors and habits, they can be useful in sun and shade, moist and dry, as individual specimens, companion plants and ground covers.
The Good News is that out of about 900,000 insect species currently living on our planet, only 1% to 3% are pests. We do not need systemic neonicotinoids (neonics) or any toxic pesticides to grow plants well. The solution is to employ human attention, biodiversity, nutrient-dense soils, application of nontoxic management, and tolerance.
We are known far and wide for our selection of 
With great sadness, we share the news that the pioneering plantsman David Salman passed away on the fifth of June. David was a dedicated, passionate, and articulate educator and proponent of sustainable gardening, a plant explorer with a gift for selecting and introducing exceptional plants for western landscapes, and the founder of Santa Fe Greenhouses, High Country Gardens, and Waterwise Gardening. 
As temperatures rise and we begin to wilt from the heat, many plants rise to the occasion and burst into bloom! Many of these summer stalwarts have spent the cooler, wetter months developing root systems or taproots that delve well below the hot, dry surface soil. Pollinators depend on finding pollen and nectar sources through the entire summer, so it’s important to include mid and late-summer bloomers in your garden. 
We would like to invite you to visit the Boulder-Dushanbe Teahouse Rose Garden in downtown Boulder across from the city park. The unique treasure of an intricately handcrafted, traditional Tajik Teahouse was gifted to the city of Boulder by the citizens of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, one of Boulder’s Sister Cities, in 1988. In time, the design of the structure was amended to be able to house a restaurant business, construction was completed, and the Teahouse opened in spring of 1998. Both the inside and outside of this fabulous building are elaborately adorned with colorful carved, painted and sculpted elements, mostly traditional, plus some contemporary artistry.