|
FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> Georgetown Gardens
 IN
SUMMER, GEORGETOWN SAVORS EVERY BLOSSOM
By Niki Hayden
When summer arrives in Georgetown, the celebration is sweet. Faced with a brief summer, gardeners savor every blossom, breeze and butterfly. Here in a mountain town that’s
built on rock, gardens sprout tentatively at first, with a small bed of
columbine or poppies, but bloom lavishly by the end of summer with multi-hued sweet peas and
blue delphinium.
 If Georgetown is bitter in winter, the old valley charms you in summer.
"We get wildly enthusiastic," says transplant Maraday Wahlberg, who
emigrated from South Africa. In her homeland, gardens were lush and perfect—acres
of extensive gardens blossomed in profusion. Now that her garden consists of a few
small raised beds, she’s no less dedicated. "The sun can be brutal. Our
plants take a hammering. But we are determined," she says firmly.
Stroll from garden to garden and it’s evident that Georgetown gardeners
share growing tips and plants, too. Yellow and peach columbine, tall blue
delphinium, magenta lupine and vividly orange Iceland poppies are sprinkled
throughout the neighborhoods.
 This year, large potted Martha Washington geraniums flounce their rippled
petals on many porches. You won’t find a garden center in Georgetown, so where
did these beauties come from? "Kneisel and Anderson," Maraday says.
The store dates to the founding of the town, and has been passed down in the same family. As in days gone by, the general store
carries a bit of everything. This year, they offer spectacular geraniums, which
will grace many a porch that faces a dirt road.
Judy Anderson is out front filling in a pothole before a garden tour. If it appears to be a challenge to maintain the road in
front of your home, that’s an easy task compared to gardening. Late frosts in
spring will nip early blooms and an early frost in autumn will kill many flowers just when they
are flourishing.
 But, by mid-July, the season is glorious and those gardens that have survived
the winter reward the gardener with vivid color. "I know I’ve had some
failures with our harsh climate. And I didn’t get my sweet pea seeds planted
this year." Patty Fraley says with a sigh. Georgetown dedicates an
entire garden tour in late August to sweet peas, a charming old-fashioned flower
that, like English garden peas, prefers a cool summer. "Columbines are
wonderful, Iceland and Oriental poppies are great. Shasta daisies and some wild
daisies and bleeding hearts do well," Patty says.
 Ask any gardener how they could possibly dig into pure rock and you’ll get
an indulgent smile. Every gardener learns quickly to build up a bed by bringing
in compost and dirt. Maraday mixed her sparse soil with horse manure. Others
combine compost and peat moss. A raised bed is the only way to garden without
blasting into solid rock. That’s the environment of a former mining town. But
once raised beds are built, a few plants adapt readily and grow as if they
always were there.
Several plants have jumped from garden to garden, the result of sharing among
friends. "We all have to clean out our gardens a bit," Patty says,
and pass on columbine or asters. Her historic home, like many in Georgetown, is
painted in vivid color—purples and lavenders. Many of the Victorians are
painted in pinks or blues with white trim or another equally vibrant color.
The swaths of bright color along the roads heighten the individuality of each residence. Most
gardens are individualistic, too.
 One is behind rock walls, others are patio gardens with whimsical containers.
But the most unusual is Patty Jo Tharp’s garden that she calls,
"perpetual paradise." Sprinkled among the columbine and pansies are
artificial flowers—brightly colored, poking out from shrubs. When her garden
failed to live up to expectations, Patty Jo took matters into her own hands.
"And when the tour buses would come by here," she says
matter-of-factly, "they didn’t know the difference anyway."
 This year, Maraday discovered
penstemons that would take rocky soil. By chance it turns out that nasturtiums grow well in Georgetown. At
home in cool temperatures and quick to germinate from seed, the pots of red and
yellow flowers with characteristic scalloped leaves are quickly becoming a
favorite on her tiny patio. Behind her house is a magnificent rock wall that
Cornish miners built in the 1880s. Still as sturdy as ever, it serves as a
backdrop to her new garden and appears to hold the mountain up. Unlike her
neighbors, her house is new, although Victorian in appearance.
"Once they put the house up, we saw a space out there. We didn’t want
to blast the mountainside so we decided to build a deck. It’s small and
intimate and has been a wonder. There was no way to get up the mountainside
except for a rock path. My husband built the steps and the path leads up to an
official trail," she says.
Not all mountain towns try to compete with Mother Nature. After all, the
pines, aspens and wildflowers make a magnificent backdrop. But Victorian homes
cry out for a flourish, even if it’s a tiny patio garden. Old bathtubs and
wheelbarrows are filled with potted geraniums or lobelia. Terracotta pots
with
poppies line driveways. Besides taking up little space, pots go inside if spring
temperatures drop or hail threatens. Geraniums are appreciated indoors as well as out and blooms are placed
against windowsills. Victoriana invites scarlet blooms and frilly or
ruffled leaves. And the sun stays bright even if the temperature is chilly
outside.
"Our season is three months and we are lucky if we get four," Patty says, "gardening is mostly trial and error here, but if you go with
suggestions from neighbors and friends that have lived in the mountains, you will
have success."
|
