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Monday, February 1, 2021

Free Garden Planning by Nancy Shepard

Example of Plant Select single design

Looking for garden planning help? You don’t have to spend money hiring a garden designer. In some cases it’s as easy as color-by-number paintings when you take advantage of the many detailed designs that local cities, Plant Select, and water conservation organizations have posted for free. Here are a few that offer pre-designed plans that include sketches and plant lists.


Plant Select

Plant Select® is a nonprofit collaboration of Colorado State University, Denver Botanic Gardens and professional horticulturists. Their mission is to seek out and distribute the very best plants for landscapes and gardens from the intermountain region to the high plains and beyond.

They’ve already taken out the difficulty of choosing which plants go in the front of the bed and which go in back, which colors go together, choosing plants with similar shade or sun requirements and similar watering needs. And their designs are done by well-known professional landscape designers.

Plant Select free landscape design examples

https://plantselect.org/design/downloadable-designs/


City of Aurora

The city of Aurora offers free landscape designs. You take their water-wise landscape design class, complete a site map, mail your photos and plant list and they will make an appointment with you to meet with a landscape designer.

https://www.auroragov.org/cms/One.aspx?portalId=16242704&pageId=16599768


Denver Water

Denver Water also offers free Xeriscape Plans for downloading.

Denver Water free design example

https://www.denverwater.org/residential/rebates-and-conservation-tips/remodel-your-yard/xeriscape-plans 

Resource Central

This is a Boulder non-profit dedicated to conserving natural resources and helping people improve their homes while saving money. Many local city water organizations send community members to the Resource Central website which has some innovative ideas to help you like Garden-in-a-Box and Lose-the-Lawn programs.

https://resourcecentral.org/

Resource Central Garden in a Box example