Two Gardens

This is a comparison of two urban gardens, both in the mountain west, both installed at the same time, using almost identical plant choices. Both have the same water challenges and high elevation locations. Both are walled gardens, inside fences.

One is my own garden in Santa Fe, not big, with mature trees and shrubs and vines already here when I started new gardens in 2018. The other is my son's garden in Denver, smaller, and without any large trees in it when he began landscaping the lot in 2017.

A Denver urban garden

I am at 6,900 feet elevation in Santa Fe, he is a mile high at 5,200 feet in Denver. We're both nestled at the foot of the Rockies with similar climates and similar rainfall (too little), but Denver is generally greener from snowmelt water used throughout the year.

He keeps a tiny grass lawn and waters it and the plants edging it. I have no lawn, just gravel, but I also water the garden plants I have.

His garden is formal and structured, very linear

He asked me to help him landscape his urban lot when he moved in, and I chose the exact same plants I am using here -- Rocky Mountain junipers, agastache, honeysuckle vines, sedums, nepeta, Gro-Low sumacs, ornamental grasses, black-eyed Susans and irises. I planted what I knew, and so his garden got the same plant selections as mine, although his design is more masculine, more linear and structured.

But over the 4 years that both of our gardens have been establishing, his has exploded with growth. Mine has struggled. Many of the same plants he has are growing as stunted versions in my garden.

An example is black-eyed Susans. I've written on this blog before that mine simply would not grow. They wilted, wouldn't take the water I gave them, and all declined. His, on the other hand, well . . . 

His black-eyed Susans and magenta blooming sedums
(and a matching magenta-leaved barberry)

He has a Kintzley's Ghost honeysuckle vine stretching out over a metal arbor that puts my shrubby, stunted one to shame.

His vine was only planted a year ago and has outstripped the one
I planted in my garden three years ago by many feet already

Even the upright narrow junipers thrive in his garden but remain open and thready looking in mine, about three feet tall but see-through and wispy. We have exactly the same cultivar -- Blue Arrow Juniperus scopularum, but his junipers are massive, with real presence and form.

Two matching Rocky Mountain junipers are full and dense

I have three Karl Foerster grasses growing in a strip near the house. Mine are open and delicate looking, actually kind of nice and airy. He has three Karl Foerster grasses too, but has to shear them back with a weed whacker they are so dense.

I'm not a fan of how he shears these grasses,
but otherwise they'd take over the space

I could go on. An iris clump by his garage door is thick and lush and blooms with purple abandon. My irises have two blades each and have produced just a flowering stalk or two. His honeysuckle is big enough to spill over the top of this fence. Mine not so much.

His honeysuckle in early evening, over the fence top,
still blooming in late August

I planted some agastaches called Orange Kudos this spring, several in his garden and several in mine, and his are delicate, sunny creatures happy in their spot. Mine withered and I finally had to take them out. 

The trees we have planted in his garden and out by the road thrive. The roadside trees were tiny bare-root oaks and a linden that we got for free from the Denver Parks Service and planted out in the roadside strip outside his fence. They have taken off beautifully. 

These saplings were bare-root twigs when planted just a few years ago

The couple new tree saplings I planted at my house are okay but inching along slowly as I try to be patient.

Why is there such a difference in the vigor of these two very similar gardens?

I've been at a loss. I know his soil is richer. Mine is alkaline and lean, but I do amend heavily wherever I plant. I think the greater issue is root competition.

My plantings have to compete with the aspens and cottonwood and pines that were already here in my small space, and their thirsty mature roots take any water I put down. New plants simply don't get the water. The big starved trees have developed roots everywhere under my gravel -- there is not a spot in my small yard that is free of water-seeking big roots.

Everything is so big and full in his garden

And the Virginia creeper vine that covers my back fence does the same thing. Anything anywhere near the back fence shrivels because the vine gets all the water first.

My son's yard had nothing in it, no mature trees. The water he puts down goes to the new plants. It makes all the difference. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these photos of his garden -- so similar to mine and so, so much fuller!