During our Great American West road trip last month, my daughter and I passed through charming Fort Collins, Colorado, and visited The Gardens on Spring Creek, the city’s community-oriented botanic garden. The entry garden was ablaze with late-summer flowers like purple coneflower, rudbeckia, and cleome.

Pink cleome stood almost as tall as me.

A closeup view

Purple coneflowers have been done for months in my Austin garden, but here they were in full party mode. This is one of my favorite flowers.

This combo is eye-catching too: ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena, purple verbena, some sort of white daisy, and a copper-colored grass or sedge.

Ka-pow! Red gomphrena pompoms with red zinnias, set off by more of that copper grass — love!

At the entrance to the Children’s Garden, a gigantic watering can overflows with white frothy flowers and silvery foliage.

From its spout pours a stream of morning glory vine, which seems to ripple outward via circles of purple and white annuals.

Just as we were about to enter the garden, I looked up and spotted a familiar face, Lauren Springer Ogden, garden designer extraordinaire, plantswoman, author, and recent speaker for my Garden Spark series. Lauren lives in Fort Collins and just happened to be checking on her under-construction Undaunted Garden at The Gardens on Spring Creek.

The brand-new Undaunted Garden will be “an artistically designed showpiece of plants native to western North America and non-native plants adapted to local growing conditions. The primary purpose of this three-quarter acre xeriscape garden is to demonstrate how to garden appropriately and beautifully in a drought-prone region.” I really wish I could have seen this! I’ll have to visit again in a few years to see Lauren’s latest beautiful and xeric design.

Due to the major construction going on, only half the garden was open, but this included the colorful Children’s Garden.

Cheerful yellow and orange flowers and tawny grasses created an autumnal vibe.

A second giant watering can spills actual water here, which pours onto a huge flat rock carved with scrolled basins for water play.

An old-timey pump gets the water flowing.

Colorful plants enliven the garden beds.

Red hibiscus

Pink zinnias paired with purple-leaved pennisetum

A green-roofed pavilion shelters four tables from sun and rain.

I love that green roof.

A sculpture of an eagle in grab-mode is a little surprising in the otherwise playful children’s garden, but why not?

This tree caught my eye, the amusingly named ‘Hot Wings’ Tatarian maple. Turns out, ‘Hot Wings’ was discovered and cultivated in Fort Collins, according to Plant Select. While Tatarian maple is native to Eurasia, a chance seedling with distinctive red samaras (winged fruits) popped up at a Colorado nursery and was put into cultivation.

And here’s the beautiful result.

Pink agastache in the foreground echoes the rosy samaras of the maple.

This creative arbor of flower-pot-headed children at play marks the entrance to a child-friendly vegetable garden.

Flower-pot-headed scarecrows smilingly stand watch over the plants.

Aloha!

Colorful flowers spring from purple-painted tire planters.

Gourds dangle from a wire tunnel trellis.

I adore purple-stemmed, spiny-headed eryngium.

Entering the Sustainable Backyard garden, I spotted a verdigris praying mantis on an arbor post.

An alternative lawn of rupturewort (Herniaria glabra) is recommended for local gardeners.

A wire bird sculpture, The Sentinel, watches over a daylily patch.

Something was cooking under a big arbor in the Outdoor Teaching Garden — schoolkids making pizzas with their harvest from the Garden of Eatin’…

…seen here.

On the way out, a purple and pink flower border…

…was humming with fuzzy bees.

And check out this praying mantis sculpture that’s big enough to catch anything that moves.

We weren’t able to visit a rock garden and wetland garden because of construction on 5 additional acres. Progress looked well underway, and the next phase will include a great lawn and stage, Lauren’s Undaunted Garden, and prairie and foothills gardens. As we exited under a wine-pouring entry arbor (?)…

…we strolled down the sidewalk to see a hellstrip garden that Lauren designed, the Xeric Parkway Strip:

Our Xeriscape Parkway Strip represents the “best kept secret” of our gardens. Designed by nationally recognized landscape designer and garden author, Lauren Springer-Ogden, this Parkway Strip, known as the Hell Strip, showcases xeriscape plants that thrive in hot, often inhospitable areas sandwiched between the street and the sidewalk. Lauren developed her vision for the Hell Strip in her first book, The Undaunted Garden. The Gardens wanted to share this vision with visitors to show that difficult areas can become beautiful with the right type of plant material. Visitors who take the time to see this garden are amazed at the number of plants that can grow with limited irrigation in this tough condition.

Lauren told me that the hellstrip wasn’t looking so great then, in mid-August, and the section along the front of the gardens did look a bit tired and in need of TLC. But the hellstrip along a side street looked terrific, billowy with low grasses and pink and purple heather-like plants.

What a great combo for a hellstrip or any sunny garden in Colorado.

Up next: Road-tripping up to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. For a look back at our hike in majestic Eldorado Canyon near Boulder, Colorado, click here.

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