October 19, 2024
When I told my gardening friends that I was planning to go to Denver in late September, many recommended I go to a summer home garden. It was already on my list. SummerHome has received a lot of media attention since its creation in 2020, and I’ve read about it in Visionary and Shrouded in Light. This urban xeriscape in the Washington Park neighborhood is privately owned but open to the public, with regular visiting hours. But even better, the owner, Lisa Negri, a former manager of an environmental engineering company, generously made time to meet me in her garden and tell me all about it.
Summer home owner Lisa Negri and me
The 0.14-acre garden’s beginnings were a setback. Lisa watched as 100-year-old bungalows in her inner-city neighborhoods were replaced by boxy two- and three-story homes that blocked out light and loomed over the neighbors. In 2019, when the owner passed away and the dilapidated bungalow next door became vacant, she immediately bought it off-market to avoid it falling into the hands of builders. Then she tore it down.
She considered having a large lawn where her dog could run around. But she didn’t like the idea of maintaining a large lawn in Denver’s dry climate, where the average annual rainfall is only 14 inches. Lisa was volunteering at the Denver Botanical Gardens, where she met horticulturist and garden designer Kevin Phillip Williams, and they began talking about what the garden could become.
Soon, Kevin was designing waterfront gardens suited to Colorado’s prairie climate. (Steppes are semi-arid grasslands with cold winters and mild to hot summers.) In 2020, when the Denver Botanic Gardens closed due to the pandemic, Lisa became a garden volunteer eager to get back to the soil. made use of the military. And they planted 4,000 plants in SummerHome.
The garden that resulted from Lisa and Kevin’s collaboration, which still stands today, is gorgeous in late September, golden with harebrush and goldenrod, swaying with ‘undundated ruby’ muhly and large bluestem grasses. Colorful agastache, salvia, and rows of cypress trees sparkle. . But perhaps the most beautiful part of this garden is the intention behind it. Lisa’s desire is to make this garden a pocket park for the public, rather than just her own.
Now, neighbors stop by to walk the garden paths with their dogs or look for hummingbirds and butterflies with their children. Lisa found people relaxing on chairs and benches set up throughout the garden. While I was there, a dog owner stopped by with his pup to take a sip from the fountain drink.
Every morning, Lisa unlocks the gate announcing that the garden is open to visitors. At night she closes it again. The garden is open to the public from spring bulb season through fall ripening season. After the first hard freeze, Lisa closes it for the winter.
A QR code on the fence links to SummerHome’s website, which includes a plant list. Lisa hopes the garden will encourage others to plant native and adapted water plants, showcasing their beauty and wildlife habitat without requiring frequent watering.
Lisa said she waters the new plants to establish them, but otherwise waters the entire garden once or twice a year. In an unusually hot and dry year like this one, she has watered it four times. There is no irrigation system. Watering is done manually or with a soaker hose. She has a gardener who comes to check on her once a week. Additionally, volunteer helpers from the community sign up to work in the garden one day each month. The community’s investment in the garden has been very inspiring and Lisa says she couldn’t have done it without them.
Willie, one of Lisa’s dogs, enjoys the view from a rock bench.
The two fountains run on timers in the morning and evening and shut off during the hot parts of the day to conserve water.
This water attracts birds and other wildlife and adds to the peaceful atmosphere of the garden.
When I visited in late September, gravel roads wind through grasses and flowering perennials that stood shoulder-high.
Lyman Whitaker’s kinetic sculpture captures the wind, drawing the eye inward from the surrounding structures.
Cypress and mooli grass rising up
“Undonted Ruby” Muhly and Euphorbia blooming on the snow
A sandstone-style hypertufa trough created by Colorado gardener Domenic Turnbull is filled with succulents that Lisa rescued from a nearby property about to be demolished…
…Each is a tribute to a house and garden now gone.
Custom-made ceramic totems by Rita Valli reflect the colors of nearby plants.
Bee clusters near rabbit thickets provide nesting sites for solitary bees and wasps, which are important pollinators. A neighborhood teenager drew a tarot card design on the box.
Holes drilled in wooden blocks provide a place to lay their eggs for solitary bees and wasps that nest in hollow trunks and tree cavities. The larvae hatch inside the body and become adults by eating pollen and nectar collected by the mother.
According to Lisa, Kevin’s garden design was inspired by graffiti, specifically a photo he took in Slovenia of a utility box covered with colorful doodles. Using color as a spatial guide, he gathered plant species into separate clusters and dusted them all with a seed mixture to create a garden collage that was greater than the sum of its parts.
Lisa said most of her neighbors support public-private projects. But a neighbor filed a complaint with the city early on, and the city issued a cease-and-desist order requiring Lisa to stop public access to the garden. For eight months, the gates of the summer home remained closed. But Lisa didn’t give up on her vision.
With the help of Kevin and other gardeners, she put together a 96-page rezoning request documenting how the garden would provide wildlife habitat, green space essential to the urban environment, and other benefits. details of what is provided. It took multiple reapplications, but the city finally approved the rezoning of the site, allowing the summer home to reopen.
One of several rock benches in the garden that can be used as a place to rest or as a perch to admire the garden from above.
Lisa said about 20 percent of her plants are native to Colorado’s Front Range, where she lives. The rest come from grassland regions around the world with climates similar to Denver’s. She avoids rare plants and chooses species that are easily available at nurseries so that anyone interested in gardening can go out and find the same plants and plant them in their gardens.
Grass and wind sculptures add movement to your garden. That’s Lisa’s house next door.
Dense plants surround the garden and prevent weeds from growing.
salvia
Agastache
The broken bricks in the copper birdbath provide bees and other pollinators with a safe place to alight for a drink.
Yucca
milkweed
Bees live in rabbit pig flowers.
Agastache and Liatris seed heads
Snow-covered mountain euphorbias look beautiful with their mint and white colors among the rose, silver, and tan grasses.
another view
Autumn gentle palette
Believe it or not, this is only half of my SummerHome Garden photos. I haven’t even shown you the second half, which includes the beautiful gap garden. Stay tuned for part 2!
And get this, Austin: Lisa has agreed to come talk to me about summer homes on April 10th as part of my Garden Spark series. We will provide more details in the future.
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