A hot border in Denver - Garden/Mountain Guide - flower gardening - Brief Article

Sunset, Oct, 2002 by Colleen Smith

* A fine-arts degree with a concentration in painting taught Mary Kobey how to spin the color wheel successfully In designing this border for the front of her Denver townhouse, Kobey combined spring-blooming flowers and foliage with contrasting or complementary colors.

Rising through the blue Grown pansies and Vinca minor are tulips in shades of orange ('Lightning Sun' and 'Temple of Beauty') and purple ('Gum Laude'). Between the flowers, chartreuse-leafed Spiraea japonica 'Limemound' forms broad strokes of color for Kobey's painterly plot.

Kobey orders most of her tulips from John Scheepers (860/567-0838 or www.johnscheepers.com). She plants the pansies and tulips in October, putting down seven to nine bulbs of one variety side by side in each 10-inch-deep hole, adding bone meal and bulb food to the soil according to package directions. Then she blankets the bed with a mulch of leaves to protect the plants from erratic temperatures.

During winter, she waters at least once a month--a step she says is crucial to her border's success. The next spring, at the end of April or in early May, Kobey feeds the pansies with liquid fertilizer (15-3015). She treats the pansies and tulips as annuals, pulling them up after they wither and replacing them with summer annuals, followed by fresh bulbs planted each autumn.