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FrontRangeLiving.com -> Garden -> Raven Ranch
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THE BLACK FOREST OF COLORADO, A PRIVATE BOTANIC GARDEN THRIVES
By Niki Hayden
On a little over six acres with an elevation of
6,500 feet in Colorado’s Black Forest, Rebecca Day-Skowron invites plants to
believe that they are home. Home originally may have been the Himalayas, central Asia or
Wyoming. Colorado provides the climate and temperatures. Rebecca will attend to
their other needs.
Rebecca operates a mail-order business, Rocky Mountain Rare Plants. Seeds from remote areas of the
Rocky Mountains are collected, stored and teased into cultivation. "We
specialize in alpine and rock gardens," she says, "but we may also
have shrubs and fern spores."
 Thousands of seldom seen plants exist in the West. Rebecca and her husband
Bob travel and hike each year to search for remarkable varieties not commonly
found in everyday gardens. Sometimes they follow a tip given to them by friends.
Sometimes they search for limestone, a known habitat for rare plants. Or,
they look for a geologic formation sure to yield a unique find. It’s no wonder
that they have established a spectacular garden of their own.
The Black Forest Provides An Alpine Climate
 The Black Forest is east of the Colorado foothills with a gentle elevation
and pine forests, where hailstorms and early frosts form a part of the normal
swings in weather. Rebecca’s garden is somewhat protected by a ring of gamble
oaks. She grows a remarkable variety of perennials, far more than the hundreds
of species from the West that is her specialty.
On a late spring morning, Panayoti Kelaidis, curator of plant collections at the Denver Botanic Gardens
as well as a friend and admirer of Rebecca’s garden, calls it a
"botanical garden that puts many botanical gardens to shame." Some
rare plants grow here that he believes won't grow at Denver's lower elevation.
"So annoying," he says good naturedly, as he peers at a coveted
specimen.
 In the Himalayas, the soil is acidic, quite the opposite of Rocky Mountain
soil. On a woodland floor strewn with pine needles and nestled under a pine tree, a spectacular blue
Himalayan poppy blooms. Nearly the size of a dinner plate, a blue poppy looks
unworldly, like a plant from a science fiction movie—too beautiful and fragile
for this world. The poppy, although far from home, thrives under the pines. "These pines have
been here a long time," Rebecca says, "so this entire area is somewhat
acidic." Over time, the pine needles have altered the soil’s balance from
neutral to acidic, matching the needs of the poppy.
 Hostas of all sizes abound in this
woodland garden. Some are delicate with leaves the
size of a kitten’s ear. Others are streaked in white, as if the leaves have
been bleached. One holds tiny blue blooms aloft tall spires. "I really like
hostas," she says, "I like a lot of textures in the foliage. I’m not
just going for the blooms."
Soil And Water Hold Clues to Success
"Most of my soil is neutral, made up of sandy loam," Rebecca points
out, which provides a boon for the hundreds of differing plants she is growing.
Rebecca’s plants span a wide spectrum of soil needs. The vast majority will
adjust to sandy loam. Others will need acidic or alkaline soils to thrive. Despite the pines
in our forests, the soil in the Rocky Mountains tends to be alkaline from the
crushed stone of our mountains. It’s low in organic matter. But that condition
is exactly what many native plants require. They have evolved to flourish with few nutrients and quick drainage.
 To grow
exquisite Rocky Mountain plants,
Rebecca builds a berm, or small hill, from
soil that is hospitable to Western wildflowers. On that rocky, gravel-strewn
mound, exotic penstemons, cacti and succulents thrive. These are plants that will not
tolerate water-logged roots.
Each of Rebecca’s gardens is a region unto itself: Nepal, Utah, Colorado
Plateau, Swiss Alps, Turkey, and Spain’s Pyrenees. "When people complain
about gardening in Colorado, I have no sympathy," Panayoti explains,
"we can grow traditional English plants that like coolness, but also we can
grow Himalayan and Western natives in the Denver foothills."
 Rebecca’s garden is testimony to that, but
she specializes in Western plants from a corner of Wyoming, or a mountainside in Utah. And while
these plants grow happily side-by-side, they rarely hybridize. Penstemons are a
notable example.
"They carry a genetic barrier to hybridizing and require
different pollinators," Panayoti says. Nature has imparted wildness to
them, as if to insure that a vast repertoire of penstemons will continue.
Penstemons form the largest group of wildflowers in America and in the last few
decade, many gardeners have embraced penstemons with
fervor. Their tall spires, trumpet blossoms and vivid hues, make showy
penstemons, once considered the bastion of elite gardeners, a choice ornamental
in perennial gardens.
 Not that many of Rebecca’s customers are mainstream gardeners. They come
from all corners of the world, notably Scandinavia, Japan, England and Scotland. And
while some plants have gravitated to everyday gardens, most of the alpines are
cultivated by a small, dedicated and worldwide group. What has leaped beyond this group and
into regional gardens, are the native plants that can withstand drought. More
garden centers are asking for dry land plants to bolster their offerings to
Colorado gardeners concerned about water shortages. With the cultivation of
native plants also comes a lesson in mulches.
Mulches Make A Difference
 A closer look at Rebecca’s gardens reveals three kinds of
mulch. The dry
land plants are surrounded by crushed rock--a pebble-sized gravel. While the dry land plants grow in high berms,
other rock garden plants are in raised beds only a few inches off the ground. Bark mulch, so common in most gardens, will rot the crowns of
an alpine plant, she says.
In a separate border of traditional flowering plants, finely chopped
bark mulch covers the perennial beds.
 Head to the Asian gardens and they’re not raised at all. Pine needles
carpet a ponderosa and gamble oak woodland floor, dotted with primroses and
ferns. "I do a lot of research before I put in a plant," Rebecca says,
"I look for just the right place."
Choosing the right soil, mulch and exposure creates an agreeable climate for
each of these plants. Not far away is a cliff rose, nodding penstemons, chiming
bells, Arizona cypress and a huge manzanita bush. "There are a lot of
plants that many people might consider marginal in our area, like the Arizona
cypress," Panayoti says, "but they are thriving here."
 With
hundreds of specimens, Rebecca recites a litany of
Latin botanical names. It’s the garden of a scholar, an observer who takes in
the requirements of each plant as if it was the only one around.
"If you know
that a plant is from Utah, you may think that is only the desert. But there are
many other conditions, such as canyons. So you have to provide more protective
conditions for what it needs," she says. "For an alpine to grow at
lower elevations, you’ll have to adjust to their needs and guess what changes
might have to be made."
Saving The Rarest
 The thrill of hunting for seeds in the wild
assumes that overlooked plants,
which may just be hanging onto existence in their locale, will find a wider
audience to protect and nurture them in the horticultural
trade. Like the Asian plants in Rebecca's garden, they may find a new climate thousands of miles away that reminds them of
home.
A collection of heathers from Europe blends into a groundcover tapestry
and a vast assortment of flowers from the campanula family thrive, although
these hail from Turkey.
Gardeners like Rebecca, who take in wild plants and provide an environment
for them to thrive, may save some of our endangered species. Most rare plants
grow in small pockets, like a cushion cactus that has been found only
on the limestone cliffs around Carlsbad Caverns.
 Over millions of years, it has
evolved to survive in that one location. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t
be grown elsewhere, and does—nestled into Rebecca’s dry land garden. It’s
not temperamental, given a berm of crushed limestone. Someday this small alpine
may become a
standard fixture in the plantings of rock garden enthusiasts.
"Of course this is not the same as preserving habitat for the plant--but
plant populations can be taken out by drought or cattle. One of the better parts
of the business is circulating a species that has a fragile hold on its
environment," she says, but will find hospitality elsewhere.
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