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CONSERVANCY TOURS OPEN PRIVATE GARDENS
By Niki Hayden
Each year, the Garden Conservancy hosts an Open Days program when gardeners
invite the public into their private gardens. The program runs nationwide with
the goal of raising money. Since 1989, the Garden
Conservancy has acquired and preserved remarkable private gardens for public use.
In 2000, Colorado Springs was the only Colorado city enrolled in Open Days.
By 2002, both Denver and Colorado Springs showcased a total of 12 gardens tended by enthusiastic gardeners.
We visited three
gardens, each as unique as the gardener who tends them.
DRAMATIC COLOR COMBINATIONS
 The Marilley garden showcases Corrie Marilley’s love for color
combinations. Chartreuse leaves blanket the stems of purple allium, royal blue
salvia and violet Corsican pansies. It’s a brilliant combination that catches
the dappled light under giant cottonwood trees. Although much of her garden
surrounding the turn-of-the-century farmhouse is shaded, the blooms are profuse:
lupine in rainbow colors, peach iris, hot pink dianthus, scarlet centranthus,
pale pink poppies with petals as thin as crepe paper.
Elfin pink penstemons nestle among their brethren penstemons of 'Red
Rocks,' 'Prairie Dusk' and 'Husker Red.' The front garden is
planned to highlight the morning sun. "These are the morning colors when I
wake up and look down into the garden," she says.
 Corrie shares a few surprising details about her garden. As lavish as they
are, she is the sole gardener. And her only soil amendment is compost--no
fertilizers--nothing else goes into the garden. "My compost pile is the key
to good gardening. I can’t say enough about it. One doesn’t need fertilizer.
I don’t use it in an organized fashion, I use an old dog run," she says.
Three piles of compost lie inside the old vine covered kennel, each
progressing toward a state of decay. "I put everything into it that you’re
supposed to. Everything from the garden goes back into the garden. Even the sod,
and all the leaves."
 As a transplanted New Yorker, Corrie
discovered the weather extremes
in Colorado to be hair-raising. A late May snowstorm stripped the leaves from her
grape arbor and crushed early blooming peonies. But gardening also softened the
shock of leaving her upstate New York home of 35 years. "I looked over the
land and knew I had to make it my own," she says.
A friendship with her neighbor, Tom Peace, blossomed into a new approach to
gardening. Peace is a Denver Botanic Gardens consultant and author of
"Sunbelt Gardening: Success in Hot Weather Climates." He brought over
unusual and striking plants from his Texas nursery. Corrie tends them,
watching to see if they acclimate to a high altitude clime.
One plant looks suspiciously odd. A puzzled look softens into amusement: "I wonder if Tom snuck in here and
planted that," she says about a wide-leafed beauty. "He comes and goes
with the wind."
A GARDEN OF BEAUTY THROUGHOUT THE YEAR
 Katy Dickson’s garden is planned for
beauty in every month of the year. Tiny conifers,
well-placed trees and varied groundcovers change only in hue: spring lime
greens, fall
golds and bluish winter evergreens. She enlisted the aid of landscape architect Diane
Ipsen who Katy says, "gave the bones and structure of the garden with good
woody plants before we began."
Originally from Illinois, Katy says she fell in love with the enormous
cottonwood and honey locust trees. Eventually, when the house next door went up
for sale, she and a neighbor bought the lot and divided it. Today it’s hard to
imagine that a small house was sandwiched onto such a narrow lot. It looks perfectly
apportioned for the Dickson gardens. Hawthorne, arbovitae, crabapples and a
golden chain tree provide dappled shade. Under them lie dwarf spruce, the 'Montgomery.' The golden chain tree is tall and lanky now, but Katy says it offers
beautiful orchid-like blossoms in the spring.
 Under the trees and shrubs creep groundcovers: barren strawberry, perennial
geraniums and mahonia. Bulbs, a rose of Sharon, St. Johnswort and lady’s
mantle provide interest as foundation plants. And a clump birch forms a graceful
arch.
 Maydie,
Katy's bassett hound parades onto the small lawn and waddles between the paths. Large flagstones form a patio and
a children’s playhouse still shelters forgotten toys. But
this is no ordinary children’s playhouse. It has a working fireplace. "We
were told that the original owner smoked his cigars in this small house and
invited over his poker buddies," Katy says.
A 30-year-old Jackman''s purple clematis covers an old arbor. The patio is a shaded
garden with begonias and lilies—some beaten down by the recent snows. Wide
leaved bergenia circle the garden next to a small koi pond. The Dickson garden
is a woodland garden in the middle of Denver, a tribute, Katy says, to her love
for trees.
A CLASSIC PERENNIAL GARDEN
 Just as trees define the Dickson garden, roses form the skeleton of Louise
Bailey Connor’s garden. On a hot summer afternoon, the roses are in full
array. "I started with hybrid teas," Louise says, "now I wouldn’t
have a one." Hybrid teas fared poorly in her garden, plagued by disease and
winter cold. Now she’s a fan of the modern David Austin roses. Their heady
perfume and long bloom won her over. "I grow Austins nearly
exclusively now," she says, but a row of the modern shrub 'bonica'
is laden with bountiful blossoms. "I have a few rugosas—they’re almost
rustic in appearance. But I love the voluptuous blossoms and fragrance of the Austin
rose, 'Sally Holmes.' " And a ‘Graham Thomas’ blooms nearby.
 "I’m almost ready to give up on the
delphiniums," Louise laments.
The tall, stately delphiniums are in full bud, like the buttons on the blouse of
a Victorian lady. But recent heavy rains and winds will drive a delphinium lover
nearly mad. And, Louise says,
"sometimes they come up and sometimes they don’t. Perhaps I should stick
to monkshood."
"Right now I love the 'Annabelle' hydrangea along the fence. And the tree
peonies seem to do so well here. I have a line of them, a wonderful one is
called 'The Golden Wheel.' It’s pale yellow and stays small, so it
doesn’t need staking," she says. Tree peonies are immigrants from
the north of China and perfectly acclimated to cold, dry climates providing they
are sheltered from the wind.
Coral poppies surround budding lilies. A shady section offers bleeding
hearts, columbine, monkshood and astilbe. Most of the trees in the backyard are
pear trees. They don’t give fruit, but Louise says their fragrance and flowers
are beautiful in the spring. The ‘Aristocrat’ pear is shaped full and
rounded while the ‘Chanticler’ pear is columnar, lined up against the back
fence. The column provides a screen without overly shading the plants
below.
Even in a small garden, the bright Colorado light and variation in
temperature create pockets of horticultural extremes. "Take into account the
microclimates," Louise says, "when plants aren’t happy then there’s
no point in leaving them where they are. They have to be moved."
For
more information on The Garden Conservancy, go to: www.gardenconservancy.org
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