I recently spent several days in Boulder with my son Phil, his wife Deborah and grandson Lennon. My mom and I visited together, and one morning we decided to do some sightseeing while Phil and Deborah went to work. What to do was the big question. We decided to visit the Denver Botanic Gardens. No one I know had ever been there and we both love plants and flowers, so we headed to Denver. The gardens are located just a few minutes from the city center, and are probably the nicest gardens I've ever seen including Kew Gardens in London and Descanso Gardens in Los Angeles.
Wow is all I can say. I would plan on about 1 1/2- 2 hours to visit the gardens. They are small but filled with great beauty. One of my favorite areas of the garden was where herbs were incorporated into the garden, often as hedges. Purple basil as a low hedge is spectacular. There are numerous other edible plants used in decorative manner such as white and purple cabbages and kale. One area has spectacular apricot trees, laden with fruit. Of course I was concerned with what happened to all the fruits and vegetables in the garden, and I got the answer I was hoping for. It is all harvested and donated to food banks in the Denver area.
The gardens have paid personnel to do the heavy planting, but much of the garden is tended to by the many volunteers. Everywhere I looked there were volunteer workers watering, weeding, leading tours or working in the fabulous gift shop.
A small indoor tropical plant area was also of great interest to me. It was a meandering, circular space that housed so many interesting species of plants, many of which I had never seen before.
On the rooftop is a succulent garden. Rooftop gardens are the hottest thing in gardening today. Look at cities like New York and Chicago from an aerial view and you will see them dotted with gardens. The Denver Botanic Gardens is slowly developing this space and it will take some time to be as beautiful as the rest of the gardens.
One other great feature of the the gardens for locals is the education program. We were there during the summer and lots of school age children were involved in week long summer programs. These classes are so valuable to students and a great enrichment activity for kids. They looked like they were having a ball.
The gardens were pleasant surprise and something I would recommend to anyone going to the Denver area or for locals that may have overlooked a real find, right in their own backyard.
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