During our stay in Santa Fe at the end of August, I spent one morning at Santa Fe Botanical Garden. I first visited in 2016, three years after it opened and right before the opening of Phase 2, Ojos y Manos: Eyes and Hands. My 6-year absence meant I noticed significant growth among the garden’s trees and perennials, plus this time I got to see the newest section of the garden. But let’s start at the welcome ramada, a stylized version of the traditional shade structure of the Desert Southwest.
Late-summer perennials were blooming in pots on the patio…
…their sunny yellow flowers glowing against a bright blue sky.
Bees were enjoying them too.
Big-headed Yucca rostrata and ‘Indian Magic’ crabapple make interesting bedfellows.
Red crabapple berries contrast with blue-green foliage.
My favorite of the blue-greens — powder blue, really — is bluestem joint fir (Ephedra equisetina).
That upright, blue, needle-like foliage attracts me every time.
I expected to see new sculptures on display in the gardens. After all this is Santa Fe, an art-lover’s mecca. Here’s Wind Song, a steel-and-colored-glass sculpture by Greg Reiche.
Another Reiche work hangs from a substantial steel-pipe pergola shading a walled patio.
This one is called Pollinator.
The sculpture acts as focal point for a long view through an orchard of apple and peach trees framed by lavender and roses.
Along the cross axis, a bench and umbrella offer another place to sit and enjoy the view.
But let’s go straight on to the pergola patio.
Pollinator plays with light via colored squares of glass.
The center square entices you to peep through it.
Grapevines climb rusty steel posts, filtering the light in their own way.
This scene reminds me of Austin in October, thanks to asters, salvias, and grasses.
A fragrant planting of lavender and roses
Agastache, a plant I wish I could grow better in humid, subtropical Austin
While I crouched down to photograph it, a hummingbird zoomed in and started sipping from its flowers.
There’s a reason agastache is called hummingbird mint.
He or she wasn’t shy at all, and we communed (well, I did) for several minutes.
A sparkling grass in bloom
Harebell, a lamp-like glass sculpture by Elodie Holmes, towers over a mounding lavender.
More blushing roses
And a cute lounging lizard
Harvard’s agave, one of the most cold-tolerant agaves, adds heft to a mass of light-catching grasses.
A closer view to enjoy those handsome black spines and teeth
Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa), one of my favorite arid-climate shrubs for its white flowers and pink, feather-duster seed heads that catch the light
Here it is with the plumes of a tall ornamental grass.
Really, it’s hard to choose favorite desert plants when you see a combo like this: Yucca rostrata, Mojave sage (Salvia pachyphylla), and Harvard’s agave.
Harvard’s agave and Mojave sage
Sunburst shadow
Nearby, delicate glass bulbs — Crocus Installation by Elodie Holmes — sprout from the gravel around a Yucca rostrata.
They remind me a little of Marcia Donahue’s bulbs, in glass rather than clay.
They’re arranged in tight, colorful clusters, like real bulbs.
More Mojave sage, with bear grass or something in the middle
Looking along the rose and lavender walk, you see the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance.
A beautiful backdrop for the garden
Reflection, a silver bee sculpture by Elodie Holmes in collaboration with blacksmith Caleb Smith, is posed upright like a human torso.
We’re meant to see ourselves in the bee, literally and figuratively.
I’ll end Part 1 of my SFBG visit here. Come back for Part 2 tomorrow!
Up next: Part 2 of my visit to Santa Fe Botanical Garden, including an amphitheater and culinary and educational garden. For a look back at the doors, gardens, and art along Santa Fe’s Canyon Road, click here.
I welcome your comments. Please scroll to the end of this post to leave one. If you’re reading in an email, click here to visit Digging and find the comment box at the end of each post. And hey, did someone forward this email to you, and you want to subscribe? Click here to get Digging delivered directly to your inbox!
__________________________
Digging Deeper
Come learn about garden design from the experts at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks by inspiring designers, landscape architects, and authors a few times a year in Austin. These are limited-attendance events that sell out quickly, so join the Garden Spark email list to be notified in advance. Simply click this link and ask to be added. You can find this year’s speaker lineup here.
All material © 2022 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
The post Beautiful flora and fauna at Santa Fe Botanical Garden appeared first on Digging.
