Dear Friends and Fellow Gardeners,
Welcome to Spring, and to another gardening opportunity to partner with Mother Nature, grow healthy food, increase the population of native plants, create beauty and learn more about caring for our planet and local habitat. Some people would call this work; we gardeners call it fun in the Colorado sun.
This year Harlequin’s Gardens is going to perform as usual, but we are not sure about the future. We’ve come to a Fork in the Road. We would like to continue to provide plants, soils and services into the future. And we are almost able to do this. We have gotten to the point where we need some help to continue. We’ve been giving a heck of a performance for 32 years, with a small hard-working crew on a shoe-string budget, but times have changed and expenses are growing faster than profits.
Our great staff needs to be paid a living wage. Eve is 74 and Mikl will turn 79 this season; and they need to work less. We need more staff and we can’t afford more. Other nurseries decided to sell their land and retire—like Timberline, Paulinos and Sturtz and Copeland. Eve and Mikl have invested all their money in the nursery, so we either have to sell the land, or keep Harlequin’s going so they can continue drawing an income.
Harlequin’s Gardens is our baby, and we love this partnership that we have with gardeners to expand native habitat and create healthy, beautiful living environments and a more resilient community. In 32 years we all have made significant progress in reducing pesticides, growing water-wise landscapes, supporting pollinators and birds, growing food and human happiness. And we are not ready to quit.
We are told that we are a valuable asset and resource for our communities, and that we should not wait too long to ask for help. We know that our community is also a great resource with a wealth of experience and insights, so we are asking for ideas that could bring us the money to help us continue. You can email ideas to staff@HarlequinsGardens.com attention Sue Salinger
Specific ways to help us:
- Brag about Harlequin’s Gardens to your friends and neighbors in Social Media and word of mouth (we know you already do this)
- Link to our website, and newsletters; write reviews. This will help to increase sales
- Increase your membership level; that will help our staff
- Help us set up a GoFundMe site-to keep us going for the next two years until we build something more sustainable
- Help us set up a Community-Supported Nursery system
- Help us form a Public/Private Partnership
- Help us set up a Non-Profit side that could accept tax-deductible donations
- Help us get grants to fund a Foundation
- any other ideas?
The Good News is that what Harlequin’s has been cultivating for 32 years is now popular and our business is doing pretty well, but we need to get to the next level—to become financially sustainable. Thank you for whatever you can do.
Please, subscribe to our newsletter online, and then you will get our weekly educational and inspirational e-newsletters. This may be our last paper newsletter.
The strategy is survival and cooperation, not competition and conquest. It’s time to love your Mother deeply. Winona La Duke
As always we will have a great selection of organic veggie starts and flowers. We spend hours and days, reading dozens of seed catalogs, searching for new and special varieties that resist disease and pests, are very productive, taste fabulous, and that we think or know will be successful and rewarding here on the high plains and in the mountains. We think you’ll find the very best choices at Harlequin’s Gardens. Please give us your feedback on what you grow from us; use our suggestion box at our store. We want to know what works and what doesn’t. Go to HarlequinsGardens.com/Plants for a complete listing and descriptions.
This Year’s Offerings
Mountain Delight, courtesy Totally Tomato
TOMATOES – Offering 61 varieties!
MOUNTAIN DELIGHT – New! – 70 days, Hybrid, Determinate 10 oz. and are firm and flavorful, for salads, slicing, sandwiches. Resistant to Fusarium Wilt 1 and Verticillium Wilt and grows well in garden plots as well as raised beds. Heavy yields on a compact plant.
Read more tomato selections ….
Chimayo, courtesy Adaptive Seeds
A FEW NEW AND “NEW AGAIN” PEPPERS – Offering 44 Varieties!
CHIMAYO – 65 days, Open-pollinated, 4,000 – 6000 SHU, Capsicum anuum
A famous heirloom New Mexico chile. Medium hot, 3-5” long fruit are probably the earliest Southwestern chile to ripen to red; makes some of the best tasting chile powder
Read more pepper selections ….
courtesy Botanical Interests
EGGPLANTS FOR 2025
BLACK BEAUTY – New Again! 75-80 days, Heirloom OP
perfect fruits earlier than other varieties. delicious grilled, baked, or fried. Broad, lustrous, purplish-black, egg-shaped 4” to 6” diameter (up to 2 lb) fruits are borne well off the ground on 18 to 24” plants; the skin is tender, so no need to peel
Read more eggplant selections ….
POTATO, ONION and ASPARAGUS
about our Potato, Onion, and Asparagus selections.
GARDEN VEGGIES & HERBS
We’ll be bringing you a Fantastic Selection this year!
ARTICHOKE: Imperial Star
ARUGULA: Wild, Astro (spring), Ice Bred (fall)
ASIAN GREENS: Tatsoi, Pak Choi, Mustards, Joi Choi, Shiso……. and more!
SPECIAL EVENTS & SALES
Morris Dancers
Community is Welcome at May Day Events, and Members Fall Plant Sales
No one can stop us from voting with our dollars. Green America
CLASSES
We’re excited to share our diverse and cutting-edge series of gardening classes this season! Our experienced instructors are Front Range experts in their fields, offering empowering, practical and up-to-date guidance and information. Classes and their descriptions are on our website, and you can register at the link below. Classes are priced at $25 unless otherwise stated.
If you are a member and you want to take one class for $10 off, you will have to come into the nursery to register or register by email (staff @HarlequinsGardens.com) and pay before the class begins at Harlequin’s.
Most of our classes run from one and a half to two hours in length, and sometimes longer for hands-on classes or if there are a large number of questions.
Read about our class offerings and register ….
MEMBERSHIP & WEEKLY E-NEWSLETTERS
about the value of our e-newsletters and Harlequin’s Gardens memberships.
OUR STAFF
We are very proud of our staff. To help you to get to know us and our specialties, you can follow the link below to our complete staff list and bios.
Jared Borowski is our wholesale plant production manager. He has multiple degrees relating to horticulture (horticulture production, sustainable agriculture, natural areas management, and a permaculture design certificate). Jared has spent two years working as a foreman and potting lead at a wholesale nursery in the northwest suburbs of Chicago.
Read more about our team members ….
VERY SPECIAL PRODUCTS TO BENEFIT YOUR SOIL LIFE AND YOUR PLANT LIFE
SOIL BIOLOGY
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 again!
Endo Mycorrhizae – water soluble symbiotic fungus, inoculate roots to bring water and nutrients. Easy to use and very effective. Good for shrubs and trees, veggies too; dissolve in water, wet roots.
Myke Vegetable and Herb–enhances growth, development & production; wet roots and dust on the powder or sprinkle in seed row to improve germination.
Read more …. about our Soil Products, Composts, Fertilizers, Mulch, and Potting Soils.
Long term studies show diverse mixtures of plants have, relative to monocultures of the same species, 150%-370% greater amounts of nitrogen, potassium, calcium and magnesium in plant tissues…and water and nutrient-holding carbon. Hence they store more atmospheric carbon. ACRES USA
HARDY CACTUS AND SUCCULENTS
Harlequin’s Gardens has many winter-hardy cacti: Chollas, Ball Cacti and Prickly Pears. Succulents: hardy Agave, Yucca, Hesperaloe, Hardy Iceplant, Sedum and more!
HOME GROWN FRUIT
One of our specialties is fruiting plants that are adapted to Colorado conditions. All the apples we carry are resistant to fireblight, good tasting and will ripen in our short season. The cherries we sell are all proven successful in Colorado. Our grapes are the most cold-hardy of any you will find, delicious fresh, in juice and a few are good for wine. We have a large assortment of productive & tasty currants, gooseberries, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries.
Read descriptions of our fruiting plant selections ….
ROSES
We are known far and wide for our selection of sustainable roses and for our expertise in helping people choose the best varieties for their gardens and landscapes. We sell roses on their own roots not grafted, which makes them more cold hardy, longer lived, with more flowers.
The US generated 204 billion kilowatts of solar power in 2023, compared to only 5 million kilowatts in 1984 Green America
SHRUBS & VINES
Serviceberry
We have a large selection of drought-tolerant shrubs and vines. These will need no water after the first year (except in drought).
PERENNIALS
Harlequin’s offers a huge selection of pollinator-supporting Native Perennials, including:
Eriogonum umbellatum, “Kannah Creek” Buckwheat – yellow blooms cover xeric native mat, feeds butterflies, bees. Mahogany winter color.
Russian Hawthorn
TREES
The TREES we sell are smaller than ‘ball & burlap’ trees that are dug in the field, leaving at least 75% of their roots in the ground. Ours are grown in containers so they have a complete root system and begin growing immediately when planted and are not stressed. Selected for resilience and success in Colorado and global warming and difficult conditions. Here is a sample of some of ours.
Russian Hawthorn
Very tough and xeric, grows 15’ high and wide, white flowers and red berries, loves Colorado.
SEEDS
This year we continue to offer a wonderful selection of seeds from our local Botanical Interests for tried-and-true vegetables, herbs, flowers, and sprouts; local Beauty Beyond Belief flower seeds and mixes. And from Seed Savers Exchange preserving heirloom varieties & sharing them. And this year: Masa Seeds organic, non-hybrid, heirloom, local
In just the last year, a choke chain of dams on the Klamath were torn down as part of the largest river restoration in US history. Within weeks of the dam removal, the salmon came back. Sierra Club
GRASSES
Indian Grass, Arizona Fescue, Karl Foerster’ Feather Reed, Little Bluestem, Mexican Feather Grass, Giant Sacaton, Korean Feather Grass, Blue Grama, Indian Rice Grass & more AND Native Meadow Mixes in seed
The world we seek may seem far away amid the chaos and cruelty we see around us today, but we bring it a little closer each time we embody the courage, joy and hope that love provides. Friends Committee on National Legislation
Mikl’s View, for now:
Spiritual Strength is helpful in painful times; if there was ever a time to be moved to feel compassion for our fellow human beings, now is the time. We can help, but our hearts have to be strong. Let’s not let our human spirit get dragged down into despair. When we start thinking that nothing is going to change or that everything is getting worse and worse, is when we get sick or start having thoughts of suicide or violence.
If we get caught in the trap of doubt, we won’t be much help to others. We have barely scratched the surface of our potential for resourcefulness. It is practical for us to focus on what we can do something about which is usually acting locally, helping others and uplifting ourselves.
Yes, write to our representatives and express your views, but also, Be Kind to yourself. Give yourself a rest from anxiety, fear and anger. There is so much good in the world. Allow yourself to be captured by the playfulness of a child, the joy of a flower blooming or a tiny sprout pushing up through the soil, the smile of a friend and the power of simply being present.
Be like a moving stream, yielding, but constantly forward. Old Chinese Saying
Evil is that state of mind which destroys our capacity to develop or grow. Evil is solidity. Chogyam Trungpa
Thank you, local gardeners, for helping to cultivate a healthy 21st Century World!
Sincerely,
Mikl Brawner & Eve Reshetnik Brawner
And the Great Staff at Harlequin’s Gardens!