Layered, largely native and drought-adapted planting, installed at a size that reads immediately and structured to keep reading in January.
The Front Range is a difficult place to plant well. Alkaline soils, low humidity, intense light at altitude, and a freeze-thaw cycle that can run through a single afternoon in March. Plants that thrive two states east will sulk here or die outright, and the failures usually show in the second or third year rather than the first.
We plant for how a garden reads across all four seasons rather than for a single peak in June. That means enough evergreen and structural material to carry winter, deciduous layers for movement and seasonal change, and a palette weighted toward species that want the conditions this region actually offers.
Trees and structure
Trees set the ceiling of the garden and take longest to deliver, which is the argument for installing them at meaningful caliper. Placement is resolved against the architecture, the sightlines from inside the house, and what the canopy will do to the rest of the planting in fifteen years.
Layered beds
A bed reading as a single band of one thing is a bed that looks thin. Depth comes from stacking — structural evergreen at the back, mid-height perennials and grasses through the body, and lower material breaking the edge so the bed does not stop abruptly against paving.
Native and drought-adapted selection
Weighting the palette toward regionally adapted species reduces water demand, and more importantly reduces how hard the garden has to be fought for. Xeric does not mean gravel and yucca — a great deal of what performs well here is soft, seasonal and generous.
Screening and privacy
On close-set lots the planting has to do the work of a wall without reading as one. Layered evergreen at staggered depths screens far better than a single clipped row, and it stays screened when one plant fails.
What’s included
Scope of work
- Tree sourcing and installation
- Layered perennial and shrub beds
- Native and drought-adapted plant selection
- Evergreen structure and screening
- Soil amendment and preparation
- Mulching and bed edging