This Weekend! New Perennials, Annuals, and Veggie Starts!
Here’s a glimpse of some of the influx of plants we expect to have ready for you by this weekend! Some are rare finds in limited quantities, so try not to miss out! .
Asclepias tuberosa BUTTERFLY WEED
Baileya multiradiata DESERT MARIGOLD
Callirhoe involucrata WINE CUPS (POPPY MALLOW)
Calylophus hartwegii ssp. fendleri
Coryphantha scheeri NEW MEXICO PINEAPPLE CACTUS
Delosperma congestum GOLD NUGGET
Delosperma “Oberg” OBERG’S ICEPLANT
Echinacea purpurea PURPLE CONEFLOWER
Echinocereus coccineus STRAWBERRY HEDGEHOG
Echinocereus engelmannii ENGELMANN’S HEDGEHOG
Echinocereus reichenbachii PURPLE CANDLE
Echinocereus roetteri ROETTER’S HEDGEHOG
Echinocereus triglochidiatus CLARET CUP CACTUS
Echinocereus trigloch. f. White Sands WHITE SANDS
Echinocereus viridiflorus GREEN PITAYA
Escobaria sneedii SNEED’S PINCUSHION
Escobaria vivipara BALL CACTUS
Hymenoxys scaposa THRIFT LEAF PERKY SUE
Maihuenia poeppigii GREEN MAT CACTUS
Maihueniopsis darwinii DARWIN’S CACTUS
Melampodium leucanthum BLACKFOOT DAISY
Mirabilis multiflora WILD FOUR O’CLOCK
Oenothera caespitosa TUFTED EVENING PRIMROSE
Opuntia basilaris BEAVER TAIL
Opuntia polyacantha PETER PAN
Penstemon alamosensis LOS ALAMOS BEARDTONGUE
Penstemon alpinus ALPINE PENSTEMON
Penstemon ambiguus SAND PENSTEMON
Penstemon barbatus SCARLET BUGLER
Penstemon caespitosus DWARF BEARDTONGUE
Penstemon clutei SUNSET PENSTEMON
Penstemon eatonii FIRECRACKER PENSTEMON
Penstemon grandiflorus SHELL LEAF PENSTEMON
Penstemon jamesii JAMES PENSTEMON
Penstemon palmeri PINK WILD SNAPDRAGON
Penstemon pseudospectabilis DESERT BEARDTONGUE
Penstemon strictus ROCKY MTN. PENSTEMON
Penstemon superbus SUPERB PENSTEMON
Penstemon virens MAT PENSTEMON
Penstemon virgatus WAND PENSTEMON
Ruschia pulvinaris CREEPING SHRUBBY ICE PLANT
Salvia pachyphylla MOHAVE SAGE
Sphearalcea coccinea SCARLET GLOBEMALLOW
Verbena bipinnatifidia DAKOTA VERBENA
Verbena wrightii PURPLE VERBENA
Zinnia grandiflora PRAIRIE ZINNIA
SOME OTHERS:
Alyssum oxycarpum
Arenaria alfacarensis
Cerastium candidissimum
Paronychia kapela serpyllifolia (Nailwort)
Pteracephalis depressus
Teucrium x ‘Eversilver’ ‘Harlequin’s Silver’ Germander
Thymus ‘Pink Chintz’
Thymus neiceffii
Verbena sp. Dark purple
Thymus ‘Hills of Provence’ (culinary)
Veronica Crystal Rivers
AND MORE!
Tomatoes: We’ve always started bringing out our outstanding selection of tomato varieties in the second week of April, but a little glitch with our new grower has caused a slight delay…we expect them to arrive starting the week of April 21st. So please hang in there with us – our exceptional, locally adapted varieties are truly worth waiting for!
Planting time is upon us! We still have great seed potatoes but they’re selling fast! The same goes for asparagus crowns and onion plant bundles. And oh my, do we have spring vegetable starts! Robust lettuce (7 varieties!), Pak Choi, Baby Pak Choi, Tatsoi, both Nutribud and Umpqua broccoli, 3 varieties of cabbage, 3 of Swiss Chard, 5 kale varieties, plus escarole, collard greens, arugula, cilantro and bulbing fennel, with radicchio and others coming later this week! We’ve also restocked our seed selections!
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” This famous quote, often attributed to Martin Luther, symbolizes hope, faith, and the importance of stewardship. It highlights that planting a tree is a proactive, hopeful act for the future, regardless of current circumstances.
Indigenous scientist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer tells us that the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of interconnectedness and gratitude. The tree distributes its wealth of berries to meet the needs of its natural community, and this ensures its own survival.
Our healthy, overwintered and water-wise shrubs are waking up! Choose from hardy Manzanita, B
Who doesn’t love houseplants? Here a few that make perfect gifts.
Ficus ‘Ruby’ (Ruby Rubber Tree). This pink-tinged variety of the standard Rubber Tree adds an interesting splash of color to any space. They typically grow with multiple stems each with multi-colored leathery leaves, with the newest growth showing the most intense red/pink coloring. The Ruby Rubber Tree prefers bright indirect light with moderate moisture. Generally, they prefer a thorough watering when the top 2 inches of soil is dry.
Grocery prices are projected to rise even more this summer. You can save, by planting your own veggies for storage. These delicious, hardy varieties are some of the longest-storing, and can be enjoyed for most of the winter, and even into spring.
The benefits of gardening on mental and physical well-being are renowned. But here across the Front Range gardening isn’t just laying around in the hammock! (although there is that, too.) For gardening to truly increase your quality of life, a bit of pre-season preparation pays off.
Update: Our GoFundMe appeal has brought in important support for Harlequin’s Gardens, and we deeply appreciate your generosity. We are a little over half-way to our goal of $35,000. We are working to make this a successful year in spite of challenges. Harlequin’s Gardens is not just a store; we are a lot like a farm. We grow thousands of plants with challenges of supply, heat, cold, drought and wind, not to mention rising costs. 
Welcome to a Glorious Early Spring. It’s warm; everything is growing and there are masses of blossoms and fragrance. Please, do enjoy. Our tax dollars are funding wars our Congress did not approve and more than a majority do not want. This is not representative government. What can we do? We have to celebrate The Good, even while enduring the unbearable. We can grow healthy food and both eat it and share it. 
By Eve Reshetnik Brawner
Come, on, now – confess! We know you’re thinking about your upcoming garden, probably poring over glossy, color seed and plant catalogs and websites, some of them looking so luscious and tempting that we call them ‘garden porn’. We’ve all indulged in this guilty pleasure. But when it comes to choosing the most appropriate and successful seeds and plants for your garden, the best place to shop is close to home, down a quiet gravel road, next to the Boulder Circus Center.
A seed doesn’t need to be enchanted by a sorcerer to be magic. Every viable (fully developed and not damaged) seed is, to my mind, magical. That a Eucalyptus seed the size of a speck of dust provides the spark of life to create a tree hundreds of feet tall seems like the stuff of fairy tales. Plants have devised an astounding array of ingenious designs for their seeds, how they are housed, and methods for their dispersal in the right place and time and conditions.
Here in the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on Sunday, December 21st. After that, our daylight hours grow longer, lighting the path to Spring. For millennia, humans have noticed and tracked this cycle, and celebrated the return of the light. We can take heart and inspiration from this cosmic phenomenon and light the way in this dark time by growing our connections to the earth, its inhabitants, and its wonders.
Stumped for Gift Ideas? We Can Help!
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?
PEPPER
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!
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.
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!
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
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!
Pruning is the art and science of removing or shortening branches of a tree or shrub. If done correctly, it can prevent breakage, increase beauty and increase flowering and fruiting. To learn how to make a healthy cut, study the Shigo method of pruning, or come to one of Mikl’s pruning classes.
If you’re baking a delicious pumpkin pie, or making a warming squash soup, don’t throw away the seeds.
by Dan Brawner
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.