Beautiful doesn’t have to be wet, says this gardening expert.
Growing water-loving plants in Southern Colorado often is an exercise in frustration, says Panayoti Kelaidis of the Denver Botanic Gardens, but a more realistic sensibility has taken root in the landscaping community. This new thinking shows in streetscapes and public gardens planted in vibrant vegetation that’s both beautiful and well-suited to this arid area.
Kelaidis, who’s worked for more than 30 years at the Denver gardens and who’s responsible for introducing many, many plants to Colorado gardeners, will be the keynote speaker at the Western Landscape Symposium on March 15 at Pueblo Community College. He’ll talk about Pueblo as a garden mecca.
“Pueblo has such a historic setting and it has the beginnings of a beautiful setting,” he says.
If a city has a sustainable and artistic landscape, Kelaidis says, it benefits residents and attracts people from elsewhere, so the question is: “How can we enhance Pueblo and the Rocky Mountain region instead of trying to do the Midwest (gardening style) without water?”
“During the last 40 years, there’s been a revelation that more drought-tolerant plants do well here. Plants that really want to grow in Virginia or Indiana will struggle here.”
Garden mecca?
If the idea of Pueblo — at the heart of the tumbleweed belt — as a garden mecca seems strange, Kelaidis says it’s important to remember that tumbleweeds are alien plants accidentally brought to the region by farmers, and that many other unattractive qualities of the landscape also have been created by man.
“If we go up into the Wet Mountains and to other natural settings, it’s beautiful,” he says.
Kelaidis has been instrumental in the growth of Plant Select — a cooperative program administered by Denver Botanic Gardens and Colorado State University — which locates, identifies and distributes the best plants for the intermountain region to the high plains. He designed plantings for the Rock Alpine Garden and helped create Wildflower Treasures, South African Plaza, Romantic Gardens and many others at the botanic gardens.
He says his interest in beautifying Colorado by growing more suitable plants stems from growing up in Boulder and visiting California on spring vacations.
“I’d go there and everything was in bloom and then I’d come back here and I knew it was ugly here at that time of year. It was like comparing apples and oranges. I didn’t get it as a kid.”
Since “getting” it, he’s devoted his career to beautifying Colorado and sharing his vast knowledge with the plant-loving public.
maryp@chieftain.com
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