About Colorado Garden Design

High Elevation Gardening

Gardening in Colorado can be complicated. For one thing, you can’t just read a label to verify that a plant is hardy to your zone and expect it to thrive. Our weather is too tricky, and our soil, in most areas, just isn’t the best. I’ve been gardening in Colorado for around 25 years and have lost many plants that I was sure were suitable for our climate. After each loss I would look back and try to determine just what went wrong. Over the years I have learned that we live in an environment that some plants just aren’t naturally cut out for, but with a little help, can survive. This blog shares tips to help plants handle our climate better so that our gardens can look healthy and beautiful.

Sharing our Gardens with Wildlife

Gardening in Colorado can also be tricky if you share your yard with wildlife. I don’t have a strict gardening style, but the greatest influence on the way I garden is that I garden for wildlife. If you enjoy sharing your yard with birds, snakes, foxes, and other animals, or even feel an obligation, as I do, to provide a comfortable and welcoming environment for the wildlife that shares your outdoor space, you’ll find suggestions on what you can do to create an inviting garden getaway, not just for yourself, but for your animal neighbors as well. While my posts give tips and ideas on how to attract wildlife to your garden and make them feel at home, I’ll also give suggestions on how to keep your favorite plants off of their menu.

Gardening is no Perfect Science!

I write about the ridiculous gardening decisions and mistakes I make to remind you that gardening really doesn’t need to be taken too seriously. Mistakes will be made, and a garden will never be perfect. Even if it were perfect for a day, by the next day something would need to be changed for some reason!  I love to research and learn more about whatever subject I’m writing about, so hopefully you’ll learn something new when you read my posts! If you have a subject you would like me to research and/or write about, please let me know. I love to research all things gardening!

My Background

I am a civil engineer by day, a gardener by nights and weekends, but most importantly, I am the mother of two wonderful sons – the lights of my life. Second most important – I love to garden! I feel happy and excited not only when gardening, but also when talking, writing, reading, or even just thinking about it. The older I get, the more I recognize the importance of spending time doing the things that I love; that pump me up and make me excited about life. Gardening definitely does that for me and that is what inspired me to start up this blog!

Bit by the Gardening Bug

To be clear, I have no formal education in horticulture or gardening, just a serious passion for them! My love for gardening has evolved over the years, beginning as a simple appreciation of houseplants that I developed as a freshman in college attempting to spruce up my dorm room. Once I graduated from college I moved into a small condo with a very large deck. I quickly learned just how much fun it was to decorate my deck with houseplants and annuals. Soon, that wasn’t enough, and I bought a house so that I could really get gardening (and get a dog!) I have only gotten the gardening bug more intensely with each passing year.

Reading and re-reading

My second child had complications as an infant that required me to stay awake and alert at nights. I needed something to keep me up but not deeply distracted. Books were the obvious solution, but novels sucked me in too much, while magazines didn’t keep my interest enough to keep me awake. It turned out that encyclopedia style books about trees, shrubs and other plants were the perfect choice. I stocked up on them, and read them every night for around 6 months. I read them, and re-read them, and re-re-read them. Being so sleep deprived, the constant repetition was just what I needed to retain the information! By the time my son was well, I had learned quite a bit about trees, shrubs and perennials (and had a plant wish list about 3 miles long!) That is how I acquired a good portion of my plant knowledge and it was the catalyst for getting me more interested in botany as well as the landscape design side of gardening.

Trial and Error

I have learned even more about gardening through trial and error. And I have made loads of errors! But hey, they say you learn more from your mistakes than your successes, so I figure I should be pretty well educated at this point! I think I have finally tipped the scales to where my successes are outweighing my failures, so I feel like it is time to share what I have learned and continue to learn. I hope my posts give you great ideas, solutions to your problems and a fun gardening fix! Thanks for visiting Colorado Garden Design!

Do you have a question or comment for me? Let me know!