Denver Garden Club 
The author of the suggestion of the presentation from the 
Garden Club of Denver, of an article on the difficulties 
of gardening in Colorado, met with a response from the 
members of the club varying from tropical assent to arctic 
disapproval. The author retreated in alarm and became an 
editor and so presents, to the best of her abilities, a composite 
study of the "Denver State of Mind" anent gardens. 
From "Aspen Rocks" at Estes Park— altitude 7,800 feet- 
comes the news of a wild garden where the seed of the native 
plants is sown at the season when the plant naturally matures 
rather than in the cold mountain spring; where the Cedars 
and Silver Spruces are moved with great success, but held to 
their new abode by great rocks at their roots to defeat the 
rigors of the winds until these roots have taken hold. Here 
the borers have been removed successfully from an important 
Pine, 71 from one tree, which is now thriving — and Mistletoe 
successfully cut from the branches of many others. 
That gardening as an art is new in this new country, is a 
universal sentiment. Because of this, however, we give more 
thought and attention to our gardens and so twenty years' 
gardening in Colorado has led me to the belief that our 
difficulties, although in some respects different, are not greater 
than those "that beset gardeners elsewhere. 
In this arid climate, our chief problem is to determine the 
right measure of cultivating and watering the soil. Until of 
late years we have not had the assistance of experienced 
gardeners and nurserymen ; and we have been obliged to solve 
the question, as we have solved it, by more or less trying 
experiments. Our cold, late spring, ending abruptly in hot 
summer, is perhaps the most serious obstacle to satisfactory 
gardening. Bulbs are of doubtful joy; and the garden 
as a whole is so late in starting that, not infrequently, 
killing frosts overtake us while everything is in full glory. On 
the other hand, in consequence of our wonderful and almost 
continuous sunshine, a profusion of gorgeous bloom is possible 
to us. In all other respects than those mentioned, our 
difficulties, in my view, do not differ from those encountered 
by gardeners the country-over. It is only necessary to have 
watched the progress from a row of Nasturtiums and a row 
of Sweet-Peas (twenty years ago, we were assured that 
nothing else would grow "in this altitude") to the beautiful 
gardens in which to-day Colorado abounds, to be persuaded 
that only experience and even more experience are required to 
make our particular spot in the desert rejoice and blossom as 
the rose. 
Difficulties 
OF 
Gardening 
IN 
Colorado 
67 
