Durango Botanic Gardens by Nancy Shepard

 

All pictures by Nancy Shepard

On a recent trip to southern Colorado, I stopped in to the Durango Botanic Gardens. Despite the late growing season in October, I was pleasantly surprised at what they have created. The first garden, the Library Demonstration Garden, was built in 2011 when a handful of community-minded citizens began reimagining and repurposing an unsightly, weedy area behind the library into a Plant Select® Demonstration Garden.

Plant Select® is a non-profit collaboration of Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens, and professional horticulturists. As a Plant Select® Demonstration Garden, Durango Botanic Gardens trials new plants, reports back results, and when Plant Select® issues new plants to nurseries around the region, they are tested here in Durango’s challenging growing climate.

I think its location makes it even more beautiful because it’s built around sidewalks and hard-scaping that was already part of the library property. In other words, they didn’t have a lot of choices with the ground they had to work with. And this is what makes it so special.

I was also impressed in how they used rocks and boulders to set off the plant specimens and included various sculptures to maintain interest even in winter.

Since building the Library Demonstration Garden new garden features are added constantly.

They recently put in a Crevice, or Rock Garden, on the eastern part of the gardens at the edge of the Animas River Trail. The Crevice features a garden with a variety of ornamental grasses, a miniature conifer and tree garden, and a small arboretum. 

There are two other small gardens built into the main garden. Near the center of the gardens, there is a working sundial that features a different kind of thyme (the herb) in each of the hourly segments. 

And while the time of year made the roses look wilted, the “Rosie-the-Riveter Rose Garden,” is a tribute to the contributions and influence of women in the WWII effort. This rose garden on the western portion of the area was planted with a number of Knockout Roses from the Durango chapter of “National Spirit of ’45.”