Part of the Mordecai Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited during the Denver Fling (June 2019), sits atop a parking garage, making it one very large rooftop garden. A pretty alpine garden, including this crevice garden, greets you as you enter, and it surprised me a bit, as I expected more of a play space. To be sure, there are play areas, but the garden is designed to encourage learning about Colorado eco-regions and plants along the way.

Hefty timber posts support a rustic arbor where hypertufa troughs display alpine plants.

Alliums in bloom

A boardwalk leads the way through the alpine garden, with a rope “railing” to encourage parents to keep kids on the path.

Ahead, a faux-rock cave beckons, part of Marmot Mountain.

Kids and parents were ready to explore.

As for us, we spent a bit more time admiring the flowering garden.

These are the Austin peeps I traveled with: Cat, Diana, and Laura. Since we’d visited DBG on the day before the Fling kicked off, we pretty much made a beeline to the children’s garden, which we hadn’t yet seen, during our brief stop on the official tour day. Look at all those cameras! We are garden paparazzi.

Bleached tree trunks litter the garden like natural sculpture.

A nebula of roots

Behind the cave we found these fun stump seats and tables. Laura was a good sport about posing in one.

From an overlook you see a popular play area shaded by shade sails, which sits below the rooftop portion of the garden. With boulders to climb on, a giant hollow log to crawl into, and water to splash in, Springmelt Stream has all the fun stuff.

Barefoot splashing in the creek is encouraged, much like at the Family Adventure Garden in San Antonio.

From the stream, the trail leads steadily downhill, past a pretend mining camp.

Colorado’s state flower, the columbine

At the lowest level of the garden, Pipsqueak Pond gives kids a place to look for frogs and dragonflies.

Found a big one!

A large dragonfly sculpture perches on a boulder at the edge of the pond.

There’s also an amphitheater here for classes and performances.

Apache plume (Fallugia paradoxa), a showy Colorado native shrub

As time ran short, we hoofed it back uphill but took time to climb Pika Peak (not nearly as high as Pikes Peak, thankfully) and bounce along a swinging bridge.

Up next: A visit to the plant collector’s garden of Panayoti Kelaidis. For a look back at Part 2 of my visit to Denver Botanic Gardens, click here.

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Digging Deeper

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