The water conservation districts around here have all formed demonstration garden showcasing waterwise landscaping. I’ve been to the Weber Basin and Jordan Valley gardens, but had yet to go to the one now closest to my house. It is only a few years old. I’m used to new landscapes, and it felt very familiar to the Utah Botanical Center were I interned for a summer.

They had lots of good plants, irrigation demonstrations, kitchen gardens, signs and more. One of the coolest demonstrations they had was two mock houses. One was a traditional, non water-wise landscape; the other was better designed and more water efficient. I hope to transform many yards from the first to the second. Or something along the same lines. I’m a bit more of an eccentric designer. Some of the differences was more planting beds that had shape to them, less lawn, and tall fescue instead of kentucky bluegrass.

A traditional yard. Not too interesting.

This one looks much better. Why doesn't everyone do this?

They did have a good selection of plants on display, and better marked than I have seen before. The only downside was their plant list, readily available at the entrances to the garden, was organized by common name. Which doesn’t help if what I know as Jupiter’s Beard is something else entirely. It also keeps things like different types of geraniums all in different places. Jordan Valley did this too. It’s a good plant list, but not one I’ll use because of the difficulty in finding anything.

On my way out, I noticed a native plant garden that I completely missed. Good reason to go back. If you are in the area, I highly recommend going. Best garden I’ve seen this year.

Recently, I went to a wonderful garden center up in Willard, Utah, Willard Bay Gardens. It’s really not close to where I live, but it is close to where my in-laws do. This is on the fruit way, a highway filled with fruit stands. Great place to go when peaches are in season. I had seen the owner of the garden center give presentations on perennials, and he knew his stuff. My expectations were pretty high, and it was a nice place to go.

They did have a large selection of perennials, the largest out of any garden center I have been to. Plus they were sold in four inch pots. I see perennials sold in gallon pots a lot of times. It really doesn’t may a difference if they are in gallon pots or four inch containers, and you usually save money buying them in four inch. They were a bit on the pricey side (4-6 dollars for a plant), but I think completely worth it, due to the high selection and good quality plants. I bought three coral bells, and had a hard time choosing my three plants out of 10 or more varieties available.

I’ve recently moved areas, and I find that it’s quite hard to get used to the selection of garden centers in the area. My community is larger than my last one, so there’s more to choose from. But here are a couple of tips I’ve found out over the years:

• Good garden centers have staff that can answer your questions well–and they won’t always direct you to their product.
• Big box nurseries often have good plants from local growers. But they can also have non-adapted plants from who knows where. Just be careful, but often the prices are better and its easier.
• They are all a little different, and depending on what you need one might be better than another.
• It’s worth traveling to go to a good store.
• If you can’t find a plant you want–ask. Many times, they will be able to order it in.
• And saying that, go knowing what you want. Don’t just go because your garden looks bare.

I’m planning on getting to know all the garden centers around me, but it’ll take awhile. That’s fine though–their a joy to visit.

I grew up around Thanksgiving Point, and actually had a season pass to their gardens one summer. This spring, I went back during the annual tulip festival with my husband. The day we went, it was very rainy. I saw three other groups out, and one bride taking pictures, who I felt very sorry for. Our umbrellas kept us out of the rain, and it was nice to go when the gardens was empty.

Now, a little background before I go into my description of the gardens. I went to school in horticulture, and worked at the Utah Botanical Center one summer. Good horticultural practices and sustainability are ingrained into me. When I go to a garden I don’t just go to see pretty flowers. I want to see interesting ideas, good gardening practices, and a bit of sustainability. Thanksgiving Point is a bunch of really gorgeous gardens. But no ideas, and lots of problems.

I did thoroughly enjoy my trip, but I also spent the entire time wondering why they couldn’t do things a little differently.

Here’s a picture of the prettyness:

Okay, now for a problem. Here is a hedge. I’m not a big fan of hedges, and this one is awful. They’ve planted yew and privet. They have grown into each other now and are quite hideous. The hedge is not flared out towards the bottom, and its resulted in a lot of die back.

I found this grove of aspen quite nice. Aspens are planted too often in places they don’t belong. They sucker, and can die back easily. Don’t put them near a lawn, and not in a little kidney-bean shaped bed in the middle of grass. This is done frequently when I live. Here, they have a naturalized garden. Suckers aren’t a problem. A disease tree can easily be taken out. The aspens can be enjoyed without the headache.

One last note on sustainability. The garden have lots of lawn, and its mostly perennial ryegrass. Utah is dry, and ryegrass takes a lot of water and other maintenance. (It’s one of the highest maintenance turfgrasses in our area). Not a sustainable choice at all. I would have liked to see ideally, not so much lawn, and at least a better choice of lawn.

On July 24th, I headed out to Red Butte Gardens located on the campus of the University of Utah. I had been wanting to go there for some time and finally found a nice afternoon when I could go. Luckily, it was a realtivly cool and cloudy summer day. It also happened to be a free day, although normally it does cost a few dollars to get in. That was a nice suprise.

Red Butte Gardens is suituated in the foothills of Salt Lake City. Naturally there is a lot of grasses and scrub oak. The one feature that impressed me most about that gardens was that they incorporated the natural plantings into the cultivated areas. Other gardens generally leave grass in between areas but they left patches of scrub oak and native vegetation. It brought more continuity to the gardens: they blended with nature but not by sticking purely to natives and naturalized plantings.

There was a series of specialty gardens that I was not too impressed with. They could use more variety in their plant material. I also thought that many gardens should have been in raised areas, especially the fragrance garden, so there could be more interaction with the plants. Still, I found several perennials I was unfamilar with and enjoyed the plants in bloom.

Some of the plantings were a little monotnous and dated, but they also showed improvements. There was a new rose garden planted less than a year ago.  Right now the roses were a little small to enjoy but it should be spectacular in a few years. Red Butte was worth the visit but is not my favorite garden I have ever been too. Hopefully, they will continue to improve and maintain it and make it a place to go back to.

I recently went to visit Temple Square in Salt Lake City for the soul purpose of looking at the flowers. I was driving by on another trip from my home in Logan, and remember the beautiful flowers that I had seen in the broadcast of General Conference the week before. So I took a small half hour sidetrip to see some bulbs, pansies, and flowering cherries.

Temple Square is done extensively in raised roof-top gardens due to underground parking areas, and other city construction. With that in minds, it is amazing to see them grow full sized trees, full flower beds, and lawn. There is also tons of reflecting pools and raised bed areas. The style is more formal, and most of the flower beds are planted with annuals and bulbs.

Several things that I noticed that really caught my eye as good ideas (and shame on me because I don’t have pictures!). One, they had planters attached to the wall with the holes in the sides. They planted annuals in them, so it did appear a lot like the annuals were growing out of the wall, but without the hassle of making flowers grow out from the side of the wall.

All their flower beds were also on drip tape. I bet this makes it easier to water, more effecient for the large amount of beds they have, and also gets rid of spraying spinklers that can spray the sidewalks and be a disruption to the public visiting the area.

I loved their use of color. Every color wasn’t everywhere–they used schemes and different accents at different places in the garden. I remember thinking towards the end of the trip that I hadn’t seen a red tulip, when I came across beds full full of red tulips. Every color was used, but in a tasteful way. I also liked the use of orange as an accent color in cool color beds.

The scent also impressed me. Most of it was due to the flowering cherries in full bloom. For large stretches, even when the cherries weren’t close, I could smell that sweet springy smell. The grape hyacinths were also quite fragrant with a more lilac smell.

The gardens show a lot of work and design skill. They are the most colorful and well kept gardens I have been too, with extensive use of annuals, water features, and raised beds. If you want more, you can go visit. They offer garden tours, and more information is available here. Also I highly recommend the book Temple Square Gardening. It has the best section on annual flower bed design of any book I’ve seen, with lots more gardening advice.