Now is the perfect time in the season to begin planning for next year. You are probably thinking we have lost our minds! But think about it…every day now you walk through the garden or relax on the patio you are making small observations about your flowers and landscape. What do you like? What didn’t turn out so well? What has the weather been like? How are the plants growing? What would you like to stay the same? What would you like to change? Taking a couple of minutes right now to jot down a few notes for next year.
We are working on the same process here at Creek Side Gardens. All of our varieties and flower recipes are reviewed and graded. Now we begin making changes in the plan to improve what we do. One thing we will take a close look at this year is to evaluate each variety for heat tolerance. We have always done this but the weather these last couple of years really put them to the test. We want to offer you only the very best variety in each category so that you will have the greatest opportunity for success.
Another place for professional evaluation occurs at our industry flower trials. This week, CSU Horticulture and Landscape Department hosted our industry professionals at their 3 acre flower trial garden located in Ft. Collins near College and Prospect Streets. The flower trial garden is open to the public and is the second most popular tourist destination in Ft. Collins after the Budweiser factory tour. Go figure? Beer and flowers 🙂
This is where the flower breeding companies may introduce new varieties for the upcoming season, or feature their mainstay varieties so that we may have a chance to see how they grow in the hot, dry Colorado growing conditions. The trials are both planted in ground beds and into large patio pots. It will be interesting to see how everything performed this year. We will make some of variety selections based on what we observe there. Hardy Boy Plants in north Denver will host a similar version of the flower trials with all of their plants grown in containers in the greenhouse. Container growing performance is especially important to us at Creek Side because that is our growing specialty.
Both of the flower evaluation events ask us to vote on the best of what we see. We will share these results with you in a few weeks. In the meantime, conduct your own flower evaluation at home and let’s work together to make sure you have the very best Grown Fresh flowers for your yard!
