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!
Having first visited the groundbreaking crevice garden at Arvada’s APEX pickleball courts and then toured the CU greenhouses in Boulder, cameras were already out when the long black tour bus doors opened in front of the teahouse and tour members explored the breathtaking June display of rose color and fragrance.
Once the group was assembled inside the stunning, handcrafted teahouse, gifted to the City of Boulder by their sister city of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, Mikl and Eve presented a brief history and overview of the building and the garden. Designed by Eve Reshetnik and Mikl Brawner in 1998 for the Boulder Valley Rose Society (BVRS), the garden provides the sumptuous sensory experience of the rose gardens that traditionally surround Central Asian teahouses, and at the same time functions as a demonstration of a wide range of hardy roses that thrive in our climate and conditions without any chemical pest control.
The roses were also chosen for disease resistance, diversity of growth habit and bloom frequency, form, and color. These roses are all grown on their own roots (not grafted to rootstocks), making them more cold-hardy, longer lived, and much less prone to viruses. They represent numerous historic and modern classes and types, from wild species to modern shrub varieties and including historic antique roses, David Austin’s English roses, and many others. The garden has been maintained organically for an amazing 27 years by dedicated BVRS volunteers, who keep the plants pruned, deadheaded, fertilized, mulched, and labeled, all organically, using no sprays other than water! Harlequin’s Gardens donated the more than 40 original plants, and Mikl/Harlequin’s Gardens continues to provide materials and labor for the garden’s maintenance.
After lunch at the Teahouse restaurant, the tour bus drove up to Harlequin’s Gardens, where
Mikl presented an overview of the history, philosophy, and mission of the nursery, our
community participation, our educational efforts, and how we operate without using any
toxins. But what our guests really wanted to do was to tour our display gardens, and to SHOP! It
was amazing to see what some of them chose to hide in their checked luggage! We’re grateful
that we had the opportunity to get acquainted with some wonderful, dedicated horticultural
professionals doing great work at public gardens around the continent. We’re inspired to visit
them on their turf, if we can ever get away…….