Let’s face it, we live in a desert. Don’t let the absence of sand dunes and camels fool you, folks. Aurora gets less than 15 inches of rain annually. The soil is hard clay east of Chambers Road and it’s sand all the way west past Havana Street. The city sprawls over an arid stretch of the high plains, a place where native grama grasses and yucca plants have evolved over thousands of years to survive on very little water, hot days, cool nights and sometimes nasty winters.
That may come as news to the throngs of urban gardeners set to descend on home improvement stores starting on Mother’s Day. It’s an annual ritual. They’ll spend up to thousands of dollars for fancy soil, exotic shrubs and dazzling turf. They’ll give up untold hours slaving in the hot sun, laying down manure, digging holes for packaged roses and finding the perfect spot in their suburban garden for those new petunias.
And for many, those expensive seasonal bulbs and blooms will be wilted and dying mere weeks later. But it’s not impossible to grow cool flowers, veggies, shrubs and grasses in Aurora. The soil may be tough, and the conditions may be dry, but a whole host of colorful blooms can easily thrive in local gardens. The key is paying proper attention to elements like soil, shade, sun and simple placement.
“When people want to garden, they have to look around. They have to be observant of the environment of these plants,” said Colette Haskell, a certified nursery professional at Nick’s Garden Center and Farm Market. “We have to not fight nature. We have to know the conditions, so we can put the plants there that love that condition.”
An astilbe plant placed in the full sun is going to fry like bacon on a grill. A bad mix of soil can make even the hardiest plants and shrubs wither.
In other words, all it takes to build a successful and sustainable home garden is some planning. That’s true whether you’re looking to plant an herb garden, replace a stretch of expensive and thirsty Kentucky Bluegrass or just make sure your group of zinnias survive until August.
And there are plenty of local experts on hand to help with the process. The Plant Select program, administered by Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University, puts out a yearly list of top blooms for the Rocky Mountain region. The roster for 2013 includes Turquoise Tails Blue Sedum, Narbonne Blue Fax and Curly Leaf Sea Kale. All of these plants can thrive in the Aurora plains. The CSU Extension Service also offers a comprehensive list of tips for local gardening, as well as an emergency hotline and a full list of classes every spring.
“Maybe the biggest problem is that we don’t know where to go for help,” said Zach Versluis, a water conservation specialist for the city of Aurora. “The CSU Extension Service is an unused resource for our community.”
Since Aurora’s climate does tend to be so dry, a little bit of thought about including native and drought-resistant plants, shrubs and grasses can pay off with reliable blooms. It’s an approach to gardening known as “xeriscape” that’s become more popular in the past decade.
Even the city’s water department has caught on. City water conservation specialists teach classes about xeriscape at locales across Aurora. The Aurora Municipal Center features its own xeriscape garden on the east side of the building, and the city has kept up a popular rebate program that pays residents for putting up drought-resistant landscapes.
But drought-resistant doesn’t mean drab.
“A lot of people see the word and think, ‘zero-scape,’” said Diana Denwood, a water conservation specialist with the city. “A lot of people think xeriscaping is rocks and cactus. We have plant material with lots of color, big flowers and no spikes.”
Bold and beautiful shrubs like Scarlet Meidiland roses, towering perennials like the violet Six Hills Giant Catmint, colorful ground covers like Blue Avena Grass – all of these blooms can take root in a local garden with little work and little water.
But Aurora gardeners shouldn’t feel limited to a limited category of flowers, shrubs or blooms. With something as simple as proper additions to Aurora’s native soil (supplements that can come in the form of composted cow poop, chicken poop or even dead leaves), a bloom from far afield can find a way to thrive in this high plains desert.
GARDEN WARRIORS — April’s Cover Package
GARDEN WARRIORS: The Growing War in Aurora
GARDEN WARRIORS: Oh Yes You Can
GARDEN WARRIORS: Putting Down Roots
GARDEN WARRIORS: Grow, Grow, Grow Your Own
GARDEN WARRIORS: Something Old is Something New
GARDEN WARRIORS: Think Inside the Box
GARDEN WARRIORS: Five Garden Inventions That You Will Root For