The Durango Botanic Gardens held its 13th presentation of Gardens on Tour on Saturday where residences opened up their yards for public viewing and exchanged botanic wisdom with eager visitors.
Drought has been a common theme of the tour for numerous years, Bill LeMaire, Durango Botanic Gardens board president, said, and it was on the minds of gardeners who were showing off their landscapes over the weekend.
Jacob and Mary Fillion on Riverview Drive have surrounded their home with a desert paradise with native plants and shrubs that are tantalizing to birds, butterflies and other pollinators.
Jacob said his cactus and native gardens were inspired by his and Mary’s time working at the Grand Canyon National Park. He remembers spotting globe mallows, yucca and agave plants on hikes through the gorge, and he wanted to re-create a piece of that natural beauty when he moved to Durango in 2018.
He said he was involved in an environmental education program at the national park and he worked often with a vegetation crew to hold kids camps. All the plants he worked with were native and he “really bought into the idea.”
Not all of the Fillions’ plants are native, but they do fit in with the ones that are, he said.
Their backyard features a patio, a well-trodden grass path and a skinny stone path with plants and trees on all sides. Jacob said he didn’t do much planning – he and Mary just chased their goal of creating a colorful scene that would attract pollinators.
When they moved into their home, the front yard was nothing but dirt and mulch with some trees and Russian sages about the plot. He dug out the Russian sages.
“We just started planting in the front, get some plants in the ground, and let them go,” he said. “A lot of it is just natural regeneration.”
Mike Smedley and Amy Wendland’s front and backyard gardens on East Fourth Avenue boasted hundreds of plant varieties native and from around the world. Smedley said he grows a lot of plants, and the non-native species he selects are intentionally picked to complement Durango’s natural dry environment and the pollinators that thrive in it.
They have a water wise demonstration rock garden in their backyard consisting of about 100 varieties adapted to climates like Durango’s.
“The big showstopper here is the rock gardens,” Smedley said. “There should be more rock gardening, just because – look around. We live in a rock garden. Why are we making things flat and planting turnips?”
A visitor chimed in, reasoning people plant turnips because they eat them.
“This feeds my soul,” Smedley said, turning his attention back to the rock garden.
He was quick to share his disdain for Kentucky blue grass and the amount of water it needs to consume annually to be green and healthy – about 45 inches over a year, he said.
“We get 18 (inches) in a good year. This year we’re maybe pushing 10,” he said. “Most of it came in the form of whatever paltry snow that we got.”
He said Durango residents should stop planting Eastern grasses from Ohio, New York, England and France, and pick a more suitable palette for Southwest Colorado’s climate – plants from the Rocky Mountains, Turkey, Central Asia and South Africa.
The Buffalo grass in his backyard was watered maybe six times, Smedley said. He weeds it two to three times a year and he doesn’t mow it because he likes the wavy, rich look it has when it grows to its own liking.
Other residents showed off their gardens as well, in addition to Durango Hot Springs, the Durango Public Library and the Santa Rita Water Reclamation Facility.
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