You, as a Harlequin’s Gardens community member, have made a tangible difference by choosing neonic-free plants and non-toxic pest management, choosing native and waterwise plants, building soil health, supporting local ecology, creating bird and pollinator habitat, and all while getting outside and beautifying your outdoor space! You deserve our gratitude and applause!
Harlequin’s Gardens will start our 34th season in 2026, and we couldn’t be prouder that your work, and ours, is making change.
Dalea candida, White Prairie Clover
On Saturday morning, I headed down to Kendrick Lake Park in Lakewood to participate in our local rock garden society’s annual fundraiser, the members’ sale. I always donate some plants, and I always come home with some, too, though I vow not to! It’s also a great time to catch up with friends and fellow members of the Rocky Mountain chapter of NARGS (N. American Rock Garden Society)[Read More]
Colchicum ‘Waterlily’
Autumn brings surprise treats for gardeners and pollinators alike, in the form of fall-planted, fall-blooming bulbs! Plant bulbs like ‘Waterlily’ colchicum (pictured above), Saffron crocus and Autumn crocus NOW to start richly colored colonies of these hardy fall bloomers that will grow larger and longer-blooming each year! You will love their surprise appearance just when you thought there’d be no more flowers, and so will your local bees.[Read More]
Our Fall Sale Keeps Getting Better!Aug 30 – Sept 5 – 20% off most plants, plus 10% off houseplants, Deep Discount Area continues, AND members receive a special 15% off Mushroom Compost. Plants in this week’s sale include many:
Fall is a great time to plant in Colorado. We have everything you’ll need – including our favorite tools, soil amendments and, of course, plants free of toxic chemicals![Read More]
It’s the First Week of our 2025 Fall Sale! Start Saving Saturday!Our 2025 Fall Members-Only Sale wraps up this week, and our Big Fall Sale begins THIS SATURDAY, with 20% off for everyone! Plants in this week’s sale include many:
Grasses, Groundcovers, Natives, Perennials, Shrubs, Trees, Vines.
We hope to see you this Saturday – there are two live musical performances! 10:30am: “Tea at 6” Irish Music Trio featuring Cora Weiss Moore; 1pm: Hammered Dulcimer champion Tina Gugeler.[Read More]
Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,It’s Fall Sales Time! Our Members Sale begins Saturday August 16 and runs thru August 22. For your special support, members are rewarded with first pick at 20% off most plants, (except fruit trees and house plants); and 25% off books. Membership supports staff, extras like organic and neonic-free plants, display gardens & has benefits.
Fall Sale for Everybody: Saturday August 23 through October, beginning with 20% off most plants.[Read More]
By Eve Reshetnik Brawner
On Saturday, I had the great fortune to participate in a botanical field trip to Wyoming with a small group of rock gardeners – members of the Rocky Mountain chapter of the North
American Rock Garden Society. The exploration was led by the incomparable, world-renowned rock gardener and plantsman, Panayoti Kelaidis, whose knowledge of the high steppe region and alpine plants is encyclopedic.
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A cornucopia of stunning, hardy bulbs will be arriving in August and early September at Harlequin’s, so get ready! Now is a great time to peruse our list (at the link below) and to look at your garden to identify areas where you can add fall-planted bulbs for (mostly) spring blooms (a few special Crocus and Colchicum bloom later in the fall!). Consider the gentle drama of a drift of mixed daffodils (Narcissus) that bloom from early to late spring[Read More]
Japanese Beetle is an invasive insect pest that feeds on over 300 different plants. It emerges from a grub stage in the ground in late June, peaks around mid-July and continues until early September. There are no natural enemies for Japanese Beetle in the US, and no one seems to have a successful strategy for eliminating them. We recommend a cumulative approach which combine to be helpful. [Read More]
Penstemon secundiflorus
To every thing there is season – like sowing and reaping. However, right now we can still be sowing seeds for fall crops (see below) at the same time we are reaping fruits and vegetables, and seeds. In nature and in our gardens at the nursery and at home, we have begun collecting seeds from wildflowers such as Sidebells Penstemon, Blue Flax and Blanket Flower. And in my vegetable garden, the tomatoes were planted late, so it will be a while before I can begin saving seeds[Read More]
Remember that encouraging phrase, “Yes we can!”? Well, at least one thing we can apply it to right now is planting. Here is a list of steps you can take to ensure your success establishing new plants even in summer heat. We have tested all these ideas in-house and at home.
1) Before planting , prepare the soil by spreading a 2″ layer of compost and digging it into the top 6″-8″. OR spread 1″- 2″ of expanded shale with the compost, then dig it in. [Read More]
Solstice in the Garden, photo by Pacha Edica
Last Friday, June 20th was the longest day and the shortest night of the year. This event is called the Summer Solstice. What does that mean? Sol means Sun. North of the Equator, where we are, the earth has its maximum tilt toward the sun and the sun is at its highest in the sky.
This is often a very hot time of year, when spring flowers have peaked and soils are drying. You may have noticed that our very green foothills have suddenly started turning brown. From the Summer Solstice until the Winter Solstice on Dec 21 this year, the days will be getting shorter and the nights longer.
For gardeners, this is a good time to remove spent flowers so the energies in the plants are not spent making seeds. Dead-heading followed by a deep watering will help to revive or keep the garden looking good, and can help support the plants to flower more. If you do want seeds, you can remove half the dead flowers, leaving half to make seeds and that will still save energy.
The Summer Solstice is also the best time to prune trees and shrubs for maximum dwarfing effect. Do you want that fruit tree to grow only 15’-18’ instead of 25? Does your Forsythia, shrub rose or Privet get too big? Prune them every year mid June to early July to keep them smaller. Why does that work? In the spring, plants use their stored energy to grow and make lots of leaves. By Summer Solstice, much of the spring energy is stored in the leaves and new growth. When plants are pruned at this time, you are removing resources from the plant so it has less energy to grow.
Two of the world’s top weather agencies predict upcoming years of extreme heat, which can lead to extreme wind and drought. We are already in this trend, so best to be prepared as best we can. We will have more to say in the future about making your garden more resilient. For now: grow more natives and Colorado-adapted plants, feed your soil biology, water deeply and seldom, and mulch.
This is last week of Pollinator Month…..if you’re looking for all-summer assistance, this week annuals are buy-one-get-one (of an equal or lesser price).
And: Mikl and Eve will be taking next week off to celebrate their 25th Wedding Anniversary! Congratulations for being business partners for all those years and still in love!
The cool, cloudy and rainy days of this year’s uncommonly long spring brought us many blessings – among them, a spring superbloom, both in the natural world and in our gardens. Now we are headed into a season of intense heat and sun, and probably not a whole lot of rain. There are many stunning plants we can add to our gardens that will bloom non-stop through the summer and beyond. We still have loads of these annuals (plants that complete their life-cycle in one season), as well as choice, long-blooming perennials (plants that return year after year from their roots).
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The squirming, sucking infestations of aphids are not exactly lovable, but they do have real value and they are not that hard to manage. Aphids are the bottom of the food chain, like plankton in the ocean: everything eats them and they are plentiful nutrition. I have even watched small birds like wrens and chickadees lean under leaves and eat the aphids. Aphids are a food source for many beneficial insects including lady bugs, lacewings, syrphid flies and parasitic wasps, and if we kill off all the aphids, the beneficial insects will not have enough food to prosper and will not lay their eggs in your garden.
June is Pollinator Month, bringing awareness to the vital importance of pollinators for the survival of native plants and ecosystems, and their crucial role in producing so many of our food crops. Pollinating insects, birds, and bats need our protection from a broad range of threats. These threats include habitat loss, polluted environments, and toxic pesticides, herbicides and fungicides used in agriculture, landscapes, and home gardens.
Harlequin’s Gardens recently renovated our main xeriscape garden.
On Monday, we had the great pleasure and honor of receiving a busload of several dozen public garden professionals from American Public Garden Association member institutions around the US and Canada. They represented prestigious arboretums and public gardens like the historic Vizcaya estate in Miami FL and Lotusland in Santa Barbara CA, and gardens from Guelph to Pennsylvania to Phoenix. . They had come to Denver for APGA’s annual conference, which began with for a tour of public gardens, hosted by Denver Botanic Gardens’ senior curator and director of outreach, Panayoti Kelaidis. Panayoti arranged a brilliant itinerary, including both the Hardy Roses Demonstration Garden at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, and Harlequin’s Gardens Nursery!
I’ve often talked to you about native and water-wise plants, but I am still referred to as ‘the Rose Lady’ at Harlequin’s. I still love roses, and still grow some choice favorites for their fragrance, beauty and ease. Some of them have been in my garden far longer than I have – Banshee and Desiree Parmentier, and a few others that are particularly fragrant thrive and require with little care – Darlow’s Enigma, Stanwell Perpetual, Scotsbriar, Sharifa Asma and The Prince. They are all on their own roots – not grafted – and that’s a big reason they are still alive, robust and beautiful!
We currently have an excellent selection of many dozens of roses.[Read More]
Spring rains have awakened a wonderful show of wildflowers on the Front Range this year. And along with all the smaller species, we see that our local Yucca glauca is having a boom bloom year. The flower stalks are pushing upward and will soon be blooming profusely, looking like big white candles dotting the landscape. The large bell-shaped, lily-like, fragrant flowers are creamy white to pale green and hang downward from a central stalk. They have thick, waxy petals that conserve moisture for a long bloom time.[Read More]
I recently attended a public conversation on the subject of ‘Avant Gardening’ at the Longmont Museum. Host Emily Maeda, co-owner of Tree of Life Landscaping, conversed with accomplished front range horticulturists and landscape designers Bryan Fischer and Kevin Phillip Williams about what constitutes the current avant-garde in gardening. I didn’t really feel that their discussion was conclusive, but the question has been in my thoughts. I now realize that in my mind, the definitive answer is habitat gardening.
We are grateful to have one day to acknowledge the value of the Earth. Wendell Berry said, “Earth is what we all have in common.” Pope Francis said we all have a shared responsibility for protecting the Earth, our common home, and he urged us to care for the environment. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?
If we poison our water, choke our air with carbon dioxide, kill off the diversity of beings, and in general make our living environment weak and unhealthy, we won’t have a decent home for our children and our children’s children.[Read More]
Lately, I’ve been taking most of my walks in my Longmont neighborhood. It’s rather charming, with impressive mature trees and mostly older homes, some (like ours) a hundred-year-old or older. Nearly all the houses are what my cousin Charlie, when he visited us from the East Coast, called ‘right-sized’ – neither big nor tiny. A few historic homes that belonged to bankers and wealthy merchants are the exceptions. And with these mostly modest homes, there are a surprising number of quite nice gardens.
But in the past two months, I’ve been searching the neighborhood in vain for displays of spring-blooming bulbs in front yards. A little clump of daffodils here, two or three hyacinths there, and an almost complete absence of crocus, snowdrops, glory-of-the-snow, Siberian squill; no ‘botanical’ iris, no species tulips (except at our friend Leslie’s place). What gives?
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Townsendia hookeri, pictured above, is already supporting butterflies! Also known as the Easter Daisy, it blooms for a long time – often through May. This Rocky Mountain native is drought-tolerant, is found in gravelly areas and grasslands, can withstand freezing conditions and snow, and thrives in crevice gardens. This particular one bloomed this weekend in Eve’s garden in Longmont!
That’s a Milbert’s Tortoiseshell butterfly – the larvae can be found on stinging nettle. Milbert’s Tortoiseshell’s habitat includes most of North America, extending all the way into Canada and Alaska (south of the tundra). We’re delighted to see these harbingers of spring. We usually carry stinging nettle and Townsendia hookeri later in the season, if you’re of a mind to create this habitat in your garden. For a list of natives we often carry, Read More….
This Thursday, at 3:01AM RMT, is the Spring Equinox. When you wake up Friday, Spring will be here. For gardeners, this moment when night and day, light and darkness, are exactly in balance marks the beginning of our season of hope, and lengthening days. It’s when we spend our time looking closely for the signs of new growth, and beauty. We find it in the hellebores flowering among last season’s leaves (pictured above), the crocus and early species iris, the earliest daffodils, and fragrant hyacinths.[Read More]
Ribes aureum, Currant
We have shrubs and Perennials you can plant NOW!
If your soil is thawed and you can dig a planting hole, now is a great time to plant our hardy, over-wintered shrubs and perennials!
These shrubs have been over-wintered outdoors, not inside greenhouses or shipped from the west coast. So they don’t have leaves yet (unless they are evergreen), which is a really good thing; it means that they will settle into your garden and leaf out when the time is right, preventing freeze-damage to prematurely forced foliage. They have also been grown in our own excellent potting soils, which contain mycorrhizae, organic matter, and nutrients, which will help them adapt quickly to your garden soil. In addition, we have lots of perennials that were over-wintered in an unheated structure. These, too, are ready for planting if you are! Here are profiles of a handful of the shrubs ready now![Read More]
For me, there are no more satisfying late-winter activities than sowing seeds and nurturing seedlings. Preparing, choosing, watching, and waiting offer a quiet form of excitement that grows gradually to a joyous crescendo when robust home-grown seedlings are ready for transplanting into the garden or larger pots. I hope many of you will get to experience this pleasure. Our seed selection this year is excellent, and now is the time to begin your indoor seed-sowing. [Read More]
Welcome to Harlequin’s Gardens’ 33rd year! We care about your gardening success, your health, and our planet. We have spent the winter planning, planting, ordering, cleaning, repairing and getting ready to host you, and we have seeds, seed-starting supplies, gardening tools, books, soils and soil-nourishing amendments, and a great line-up of empowering classes!
And with the arrival of warm weather, our plants are coming; in fact, our hardy over-wintered plants can be planted in March! ALL of our plants are free from bee and insect-killing neonicotinoid pesticides! Our vegetable and herb starts are grown organically and all Harlequin-grown plants are Pesticide -Free.
NEW THIS YEAR: We have been working hard to upgrade your experience at Harlequin’s Gardens Nursery and Harlequin’s Wholesale.
Harlequin’s Silver Germander
If you’re a transplanted gardener from a different region of the country or the world, you may not yet be aware of the amazing plant palette at our disposal for providing lively winter presence in the garden. With our treasury of native flora and plants from analogous temperate-region steppe, desert, and montane parts of the world, we can easily bring wonderful color, texture and form to our winter gardens. These ‘broadleafed’ evergreen, ever-silver, ever-blue, white, and even orange, red, yellow or purple plants tend to serve as mats or spreading ground-covers, or as ‘sub-shrubs’ – mounding plants with woody structure.
If you’re looking for beautiful, hardy, water-wise plants to carry your ornamental garden through all four seasons, here’s a taste of the possibilities from Harlequin’s Gardens:
EverGREEN:
Bear-Claw Hellebore – Helleborus foetida
Creeping Mahonia
Creeping Thyme (many varieties)
Daphne varieties
Delosperma selections
Dwarf Broom (Genista lydia)
Ephedra minuta (minima)
Evergreen Candytuft
Geranium x cantabrigiense selections
Hardy Manzanita (Arctostaphylos) – ‘Chieftain’, ‘Panchito’ ‘Mock Bearberry’ and uva-ursi(Kinnikinnick) Hen & Chicks – green varieties
Agave
Jasmine Dianthus (Dianthus petraeus ssp noeanus)
‘Marion Sampson’ Hummingbird Coyote Mint
Narbonne Flax
Paxistima canbyi
Penstemon – Pine-leaf, Bridge’s, Tushar Mountain, Palmer’s, Desert, Blue Mist, many others!
Prickly Thrift (Acantholimon sp.)
Sunrose (Helianthemum varieties)
Sulphur Buckwheat species
Teucriums: Round-leaf Germander, Wall Germander
Veronica – Wooly, Thyme-leaf, Prostrate, Turkish, Crystal Rivers, Snowmass, Tidal Pool
Frost on the Lambs Ears
EverSILVER or GREY:
Bell’s Twinpod
English lavender varieties
Filigree Daisy
Fringed Sage
Grey Santolina
Harlequin’s Silver Germander
Hen & Chicks- cob-web varieties
Lamb’s Ears
Mojave Sage
Prairie Sage
Pussytoes
Sand Sage
Seafoam Sage
Silver-edge Horehound
Partridge Feather
Prickly Thrift (Acantholimon sp.)
Wisley Pink Sunrose
EverWHITE:
Hen & Chicks – cob-web varieties
Teucrium gnaphalodes
Eriogonum ovalifolium
Eriogonum ‘Kannah Creek’ in Winter
EverBLUE:
Stonecress – Aethionema grandiflora, A. schistosum
Rue (Ruta graveolens)
Blue Avena grass
Blue Fescue grass
Evergreen with Winter-RED, PURPLE, or ORANGE color:
Hen& Chicks – red, purple, pink varieties (color deepens in winter)
Creeping Sedum varieties – Dragonsblood, Red Carpet, VooDoo, , album,
Yellow Hardy Iceplant (red), Table Mountain Hardy Iceplant (purple)
‘Kannah Creek’ Sulfur Buckwheat (deep red)
Opuntia basilaris (purple)
Sedum ‘Angelina’ (orange)
As gardeners, and in community, we can make a real difference to protect and support the planet. We are living in very challenging times. Uncontrolled assaults on our planet’s resources and inhabitants, climate crisis, a political culture of runaway collusion and corruption, our personal safety and our personal freedoms under threat, perpetual wars, etc., etc. And what’s propelling it all is the power of Big Money. And Big, Corporate Money has been behind virtually all of our social, economic and environmental ills. For a very long time, corporations and their allies in power have spent vast fortunes to manipulate us in ways that separate us from each other, make us fear each other, pit us against each other. This is all for the purpose of distracting us from the power we could exert if we came together in community.
Fire is on our minds. How to prevent it. How to curtail or control it. How to live with it. How to use it constructively. We remember the early winter Marshall Fire at the end of 2021 with feelings of grief and
anxiety, and watch in horror as fires ravage Los Angeles and beyond. Folks living in the relatively wild foothills and mountains have always been aware of their vulnerability to wildfire.
But now city-dwellers and people in close-in suburbs are awakened to the threat facing them (us). We are offering guidance through education, and have scheduled a Fire-Wise Landscaping class with professional landscaper Bill Melvin in April. Watch for details as our 2025 class schedule, including winter classes, develops.[Read More]
Time flies, don’t you think? Do you remember when people throughout the “developed world” anxiously awaited the arrival of the new millennium, worried by predictions that Y2K would bring a collapse of technical systems – the internet, banking, stock trading, communications – and throw everything else into chaos? And there was nothing we could do about it? It didn’t take long to see that the world as we knew it did not fall apart. Twenty-five years later, perhaps you’ve been nervously awaiting the advent of 2025 and are scared of what the new year, on many fronts, could bring. Completely understandable!
But in difficult times, fear is not the best guide. We have to believe in ourselves and our communities, and always bring our best efforts forth to build a habitable, sane, safe, peaceful, just, generous, healthy world. [Read More]
Fragrant Chinese Witch Hazel, blooming now at DBG, courtesy Mike Kintgen
It’s February already! It’s when we celebrate Black History month, and Saint Valentine’s Day. We would like to concentrate on the LOVE angle today. No doubt about it, there’s plenty to be upset about, and we encourage you to take every opportunity you can to protest and to work to right the wrongs you see. Our actions can stem from love and have the healing power of love. We can find joy in every act of love we offer or receive. We all need that to keep us connected to one another and to our Mother Earth.
Planting seeds is an act of love, and of forward vision. Our 2025 Botanical Interests seeds are in stock, along with seeding pots, trays and soils. And our MASA, Seed Saver’s Exchange and BBB seed orders are on their way. And for Valentine’s Day, we also have in stock a great array of traditional and novel gift items,
Are you beginning to think about giving gifts of appreciation and love to your friends and family?
We know that these gifts don’t have to take physical form; what we do for our loved ones and how we express and demonstrate our love all year long – this is what really counts.
HOWEVER…. it can be a lot of fun to search out just the right gifts to delight and support your favorite people! And since we know that our customers care about the natural world, sustainability, health, creativity, quality and beauty, we have worked hard to assemble a remarkable and diverse array of fantastic gift items, mostly made by highly skilled local Colorado artisans and producers, that are in line with your values and ours.
If you are attending holiday parties, you could bring the hosts a gift of some of our exclusive locally handcrafted specialty foods.[Read More]
Here we are in the season of giving generously. Not all of us can afford to give lavishly, but even the humble gift of seeds can create enormous abundance. We’re talking about both literal and figurative seeds here.
On the literal plane, a $2.69 packet of our Botanical Interests certified organic Red Russian Kale seeds (~190 seeds) can yield an abundant and highly nutritious crop of either ‘cut & come again’ baby greens or mature leaves over an exceptionally long season. Friends of ours in Boulder are still harvesting this easy-to-grow, delicious vegetable, rich in minerals and antioxidants. How’s that for a stocking-stuffer with abundant potential?
The more challenging life becomes, the more I remind myself of what’s good and beautiful and wondrous and nourishing in life, what I can be deeply grateful for and what I will stick my neck out to protect. The list is long!
Harlequin’s Gardens is a business that has, over 32 years, grown beyond Mikl’s and my dreams, assisted by our fabulous staff and our wonderful customers and allies, guided by our love of people, plants, gardens, gardeners, wild things and the connections between them, sharing good information, good products and good news. There is so much beauty and richness in all of this interconnectedness and possibility and we will always thank our lucky stars that we have had the opportunity to spread it around. And we couldn’t have done it without YOU! From all of us: Our deepest gratitude! May all of you enjoy a meaningful, joyful and delicious Thanksgiving celebration!
Eve’s “Embarrassment of Riches” Garage Sale Is DelayedDue to unforeseen circumstances, the sale, originally scheduled for this weekend, will be rescheduled!
At Harlequin’s Gardens Nursery
4795 N.26th St., Boulder
SATURDAY & SUNDAY
NOVEMBER 9th & 10th, 10 am to 5 pm
It’s that time – time of year and time of life – when having too much stuff, even beautiful stuff and quality stuff and useful stuff, is making me feel claustrophobic. My mother taught me to be an astute shopper, and I’ve spent my life as a treasure hunter, seeking beauty, quality, authenticity and value, in every realm, from experiences to plants to art to earrings.
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WINTER SOLSTICE GREETINGS!
Winter Solstice, the day when we in the Northern hemisphere experience the shortest day and longest night of the year, falls on Saturday, December 21st. After that, the tilt of the earth will reverse direction, lighting the path to Spring north of the Equator. And because Spring is coming, once again, I’ve got seeds, my favorite subject!, on my mind, on my desk (dining table), in bags and boxes all around the room, and seed order invoices are crowding my inbox.[Read More]
At this time of year, many of you probably share with me the bittersweet feeling of closure drawing near. It’s been another immensely rewarding growing season at Harlequin’s, and we are so grateful to have had the opportunity to introduce hundreds of new Colorado gardeners to appropriate and successful materials and methods, as well as helping so many longtime, like-minded sustainable gardeners. For 32 years we have been providing pollinator-safe Colorado-appropriate plants, products, information and advice based on our ongoing research and long experience, and we look forward to carrying this service well into the future. Thank you all for your support! But we’ve extended our season and we’re not done yet!
This week we are still open Tuesday through Sunday, 9am to 5pm and we still have beautiful plants (30% off), fantastic spring-blooming bulbs to plant now (20% off), seeds (many 60% off), composts and mulches, fertilizers and pest repellents, houseplants and much more.
We’ll be closed briefly for inventory, from Oct. 31st through Nov. 6th.
We will RE-OPEN November 7th and remain open from 10am to 5pm through December 22nd, every Thursday through Sunday.
Our 13th Annual Holiday Market opens Thursday Nov. 21st and runs through December 22nd.
After the winter holidays, we’ll RE-OPEN AGAIN from On January 2nd, 2025 for 3 days a week (Thursday through Saturday) from 10am to 4pm until we start over on Saturday March 1st!
Don’t be a stranger! Come and see what we have to offer year-round.
FALL GARDEN CARE
In the ‘Old Normal’, by now, we would expect to have had some light frosts and maybe some killing frost in the Denver-Boulder area. And some rain, and even snow. And lots of leaves would have fallen from the trees and shrubs. Most of us with irrigation systems would have had them blown out and turned off. But this long extension of summer heat and drought is definitely not the Normal we used to rely on. As gardeners, we have to adapt. Here are some suggestions for fall garden maintenance under these new conditions.
PLANTING
Perennials, Trees & Shrubs: This fall we have a great opportunity to continue planting! We’ve had some of our best successes with transplanting hardy roses, shrubs, trees and perennials in October. There is enough time for new plants to establish before the soil freezes. Do mulch your new plantings (see mulching section below), and water thoroughly and frequently while daytime temperatures remain above 40 degrees and the soil has not yet frozen. We still have a lot of really great plants in great condition, and nearly all of them are on sale! See our Fall Sale details below.[Read More]
Every garden should include some spring-blooming bulbs. And some fall-blooming bulbs as well. “But” you say – “my entire garden is devoted to native plants to support native pollinators and other native critters; and hyacinths, crocus, tulips and daffodils are not even native to the North American continent”.
While growing an all-native garden is a great idea, and supporting our local ecosystems is an important endeavor, there are good reasons for including some non-native plants, especially plants that extend the flowering season at either end. They will attract and support honeybees, bumblebees, mason bees, and other pollinating insects at times of the year when flowers are relatively scarce.
If deer roam in your yard, we offer a lovely assortment of highly deer-resistant (toxic to deer) spring-flowering Narcissus (daffodils) that span from early to late spring, in many sizes and color combos, some of them quite fragrant. [Read More]
I have a passion for seeds, for the elegant and endlessly diverse designs of their natural packaging, their fascinating distribution and germination strategies, and for the astonishing emergence of exuberant life from even the most minute speck of a seed. I once grew a Eucalyptus gunnii tree from seed the size of a dust mote. It grew, outdoors (in Eugene, Oregon) for several years, reaching 16’ tall until an unusually heavy snowstorm broke all the branches off. And in its native Tasmania it could have reached 135 feet! In addition to collecting seeds from plants in the wild and in my pollinator garden at home, I collect seeds at this time of year from my vegetable garden to enable Harlequin’s Gardens to offer unique and commercially unavailable varieties of tomatoes (“Anasazi”) and peppers (Lanterna Piccante), wild perennial arugula, and perennial Caucasian Spinach vine.
When planning for garden seed-saving, remember these basic guidelines:[Read More]
Unruly. Out of control. Overgrown. That’s my garden this year. But it’s still beautiful in its own wild way, and it’s hosting more beneficial insects and pollinators than ever. One of the things I love about both the natural landscape and my own garden is the constant evolution, the sequence of growth and bloom and seed formation, the ever-changing scene.
Some elements in nature and in the garden are quite ephemeral; if you look away, you might miss them altogether. But it’s so exciting to be present, to be looking when, for example, the Angel’s Trumpet (Datura meteloides or wrightii) flowers unfurl, and to breath their intoxicating fragrance in the night. Some
Colchicum cilicicum
appear on the scene with no prior notice, like the Colchicum flowers that just appeared this morning, as if by spontaneous generation, bursting through the Plumbago, or in spots that were bare yesterday!
By the way, Waterlily Colchicums, Autumn Crocus and fall-blooming Saffron Crocus bulbs are here, and ready to plant now![Read More]
Sometimes we are running so fast that we forget to slow down and see what’s ready to come out for sale. This week we are happily surprised to see that we have fresh stock of lots of premium native shrubs that we grew in convenient, affordable 2-gallon pots. We’re making them available at regular price (not discounted for our fall sale) – read more below.
And these perennials ARE on sale – a new infusion of hardy, water-wise, native Penstemons has been brought out, including P. clutei, P. glaber v. alpinus, P. palmeri, P. virgatus, P. grandiflorus, and P. angustifolius. I have planted many Penstemons in October and November in past years, with great success.[Read More]
We still have Lavender (Munstead, Buena Vista, Hidcote and Grosso), and if you want to plant them this season, get them this week on sale for 20% off! Any plants left after that will be potted up for next year. Because it is evergreen, newly planted lavender is more sensitive to hard frost than many other hardy perennials, so to give them a chance to establish before very cold weather arrives, plant them NOW. If you garden at an elevation higher than 6,000’, we recommend waiting to plant lavender next spring.
Rosemary ‘Madeline Hill’ is still in stock, and on sale! [Read More]
Vilma Tomato courtesy Sara’s Kitchen Garden
It’s been a tough summer for my garden. I had the best of intentions; in early spring I was going to broadcast organic fertilizer (Yum Yum Mix in native and xeric areas, Alpha One elsewhere) and top-dress with compost (EKO lawn topdressing). It snowed whenever I had time. I was going to amend and prepare the raised vegetable garden beds, but couldn’t get myself to tear out the self-sown alpine strawberries, miner’s lettuce, wild arugula and parsley that had proliferated and offered ‘free food’. So I missed my window of opportunity to plant my usual greens and onions, and planted only tomatoes (late), which I amended and fertilized only in their individual planting holes. I don’t recommend this approach! Those tomatoes are seriously sub-par, only Anasazi and Maglia Rosa doing well.[Read More]
A grove of Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, four to six feet tall, has grown up alongside my driveway, where I almost never water, and is now in its full glory. From dawn to dusk, the buzz of pollinators at work is intense; honeybees, bumblebees large, medium and small, plus sweat bees, hoverflies, little tiny bees and wasps, constantly trading places, collecting pollen and sipping nectar. Yesterday, as I made my way slowly and carefully past the grove to get to my car door, one of the abovementioned made a wrong turn and found herself between my capri pants and my thigh, and panicked. The sting was painful for a few minutes, no big deal, but may have been fatal for the unwitting trespasser.
The moral of the story is: Cleome serrulata supports an amazing diversity of pollinators, and gets big, so park on the street in August![Read More]
Claret Cup Cactus
The answer is: Our local and regional native cold-hardy ‘succulent’ plants!
So-called ‘succulents’ are plants that store water in their above-ground stems and/or foliage, and some in swollen roots. They may be from unrelated plant families, but what they all have in common is that they evolved with similar environmental pressures. Some, like barrel cactus, have forgone leaves altogether, and their fat stems function essentially as water-storage tanks. Their spines and structural characteristics give them sculptural and geometrical features that function as built-in shade mechanisms. And on top of all that amazing adaptation, cacti bloom in brilliant Technicolor, with stunning, silky flowers that are loaded with pollen and draw native bees of many kinds.[Read More]
As a gardener and as a person with very limited heat tolerance, I am thrilled that the autumnal equinox is just a few weeks away! Late summer through November is my favorite and most successful time to plant nearly all types of perennials and woody plants. As heat, sun and evaporation are reduced, the new transplants can establish more quickly and with less stress. They don’t need as much water and shade, so in the fall I can plant in the most exposed, hot and challenging parts of my garden. And thank goodness, because I’ve got dozens of plants still in pots, waiting for gentler planting conditions. And at Harlequin’s, we have a steady stream of late ‘newcomers’ arriving on our tables – beautifully grown plants that are just now ready for sale – and on sale – so come take a look![Read More]
Argemone hispida, courtesy Kelly Manley
There’s nothing like temperatures in the 90s and higher to inspire an escape to the higher elevations. Mikl and I did just that last week, checking out Golden Gate Canyon State Park for the first time. Along the 15-mile canyon road leading to the park, the rocky slopes were rich in flowers, mostly a yellow-flowered buckwheat (Sulphur Flower, Eriogonum sp.) and lots of prickly poppy (either Argemone polyanthemos or A. hispida). On arrival, we chose the Horseshoe Trail, [Read More]
Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,Whether we call it xeriscape, water-wise or Western Gardening, it is smart for us to water sparingly in our gardens. Water is a very limited resource, especially here in the West. In May it rained .44” in Boulder and 1.7” in Denver; in June .27” in Boulder, .36” in Denver. And it has been a dry July and hot. If (when) there is a drought and we have trained our gardens for low-water, they will survive. When we have ample rainfall (usually not more than 20”-22” in a year), our gardens will be full of flowers and fruit. Can we really train our gardens for hotter, dryer conditions? Yes. But it’s not as easy as turning on the sprinkler.
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