Why gardens?
“It is good for us to analyze why we risk sprained backs, blistered hands and exhausted paperbacks to have gardens,” wrote George Kelly. “Gardening brings us closer to nature and provides part of our desire for beauty. We all have a craving for beauty … After a frustrating day trying to get along with hordes of unreasonable people, nothing calms down more than an hour in the garden … Those who learn their lessons from the garden are them calmest and wisest and healthiest of all people. “
When we moved to Littleton in 1956 it was from Ames, Iowa, where anything would grow happily on this black, rich soil with minimal encouragement. A spot behind our barrack-style student dormitory offered enough tomatoes, lettuce and other vegetables to feed both of us and several neighbors.
We bought a house in Littleton, near Marathon Oil, where my ex-husband had a job, and moved to a house with plenty of room to grow plants and a family. (I soon found out I was handing a petition to the City of Littleton to annex the village of Aberdeen, and in another year a petition to pave the dirt roads, which were slippery and difficult after rain.)
We bought a shovel and found it very difficult to dig clay! We learned of “Winterkill” through the drying effect of the hot winter sun. As well as the alkaline state of the soil.
People at the newly opened research center told us about the Cottonwood Garden Shop on Santa Fe Drive and the wonderful owners George and Sue Kelly who designed marathon grounds, and they paved a path to green things that last.
Readers who can find a used copy of George Kelly’s first book, How To Have Good Gardens In The Sunshine State, or its sequel, Rocky Mountain Horticulture (Pruett Press, Boulder, 1957), would likely still find it useful, although we do Have a much wider variety of plant materials to choose from thanks to growers who have adapted many native western plants and learned from Kelly and others how to reliably reproduce quantities of them. His guidelines for choosing basic trees and plants are based on this location rather than trying to grow a garden like we did in the east.
Even so, many years later it is a pleasure to ponder my now small balcony container garden and to read the National Wildlife Federation’s suggestions in a Homegrown for Good article about an organic garden in Minnesota based on biodiversity. And another at the Swedish University of Lund, which promotes a large selection of pollen-fortified plants and fruits, “which offer many butterfly species egg-laying places”. The whole playing field is a rethink (from eliminating that caterpillar watching the cabbage to exist as food for a hungry bird that wants to visit it).
Ecologist Henrik Smith of Lund University in Sweden says of gardens: “Their conservation value can be particularly important in cities where the surrounding landscape may be intensely developed.” Fruit and vegetable flowers provide pollen and nectar for native bees, butterflies and flies as well for the fat bumblebees we see (In fact, native bees – more than 100 varieties in Colorado – are of new interest here.)
In order to increase the wildlife benefits of a local food garden, native plants can be planted, which ensure a “wild animal-friendly weed-like character”. Songbirds and other predators eat aphids, scales, whiteflies, cut worms, stinkbugs and snails. Local asters, goldenrods, wild roses and berry bushes attract “garden helpers”.
Avoid pesticides, of course, and instead increase the diversity to attract other wildlife. And find a few little people who can be encouraged to “really look!”
Jessica Snyder Sachs’ article “Homegrown for Good” begins with a wonderful photo of a pumpkin bee wallowing in the pollen of a golden pumpkin blossom and talks about attracting butterflies. “From cabbage whites to dramatic long-tailed skippers and black swallowtails whose caterpillars feed songbirds” … Think about the biodiversity …
