Mountain garden guide: pretty steep little garden in Denver - using gazebos and murals, growing eggplants under a solar umbrella, attracting monarch butterflies with butterfly weed - Brief Article

* For years, Mary Samora couldn't figure out what to do with the very steep lot behind her cottage in Denver. From the back door, there was only 20 feet of level ground before the slope dropped abruptly toward an alley at the rear of the property. Then, one day while Samora was driving in the mountains, she spotted a gazebo with the builder's ad attached. She hired him to construct a similar one in her backyard. Built on pillars, the octagonal wood-frame gazebo juts out over the slope, extending the outdoor living area. In the summer, Samora furnishes the gazebo with white wicker chairs and a table.

The final problem she faced was a blank garage wall. Then, while she was sitting in a tearoom admiring an arch painted by artist Deborah Bays, serendipity struck again. Samora asked Bays to paint a mural on the bare wall. The trompe l'oeil scene depicts a cottage draped in wisteria. Bays also added rooftop planter boxes; Samora fills them with blue scaevola and waters with a hose-end wand. Her pastel color scheme is picked up by pink impatiens in the bed at right and pink petunias, lavender verbena, and purple heliotrope in pots.

To hide the gazebo's underpinnings, Samora surrounded the structure with lush plantings of shrubs and vines, including clematis. She also installed a water feature: two ponds linked by a streambed and spanned by a wooden footbridge leading to the gazebo.

an umbrella for tender crops

Marcia Tatroe

* I failed to harvest a single eggplant in my Montana garden for 10 years. The plants just didn't ever mature in our cool mountain evenings. But last spring, I tried covering the seedlings with a solar umbrella, and I finally picked my first ripe eggplant later in the summer. In fact, the umbrella worked so well I wish I could find one big enough to put over my entire garden.

Essentially a miniature greenhouse, the umbrella protects tender, heat-loving vegetable plants, including peppers, summer squash, and tomatoes, until they mature. It can also be used in early spring to warm the soil before planting cool-season crops such as lettuce and peas. The 42-inch-diameter plastic dome is 22 inches high at the center, allowing plenty of room for plants to grow beneath it. When its shaft is pushed deeply into the ground, the umbrella is well anchored against strong winds and rain. If a hard freeze is predicted, the umbrella can be covered with a blanket to hold in the heat. Once plants are mature and the danger of frost is past, the umbrella can be removed and folded up until next year.

The solar umbrella sells for $16 from Irish Eyes-Garden City Seeds (877/733-3001 or www.irish-eyes.com).

Amy M. Hinman

a magnet for monarchs

* Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) may be a rangy-looking plant, but because it's so cherished by monarch butterflies, this perennial is especially rewarding to grow. In summer, clusters of small orange and yellow flowers provide a great nectar source for butterflies. Then in fall, monarchs lay their eggs on the plant's foliage. The eggs hatch into hungry caterpillars, which feed on the leaves.

After two to four weeks, caterpillars envelop themselves in jade-green chrysalises, where they stay for 10 to 14 days. Then the pattern of the dark wings begins to show through the translucent cases, and the monarchs emerge with the awesome perfection only new butterflies have.

Look for A. tuberosa plants in nurseries. Or start them from seed; one source is Park Seed (800/845-3369 or www.parkseed.com).

Sharon Coboon