Gardening & Landscaping

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Gardening in high altitude climates

If you are a gardener with deep experience in cultivating native plants in mountain climates, you already know the joy that comes with seeing these delicate but vibrantly colored plants emerge in spring. If you’re new to gardening at altitude, get ready for the miracle of technicolor blues, magentas, reds of every hue and the wild, wondrous character of native plants thriving in a high desert climate. The mix of color is always perfect, even when things aren’t necessarily going to plan.

Betty Ford Alpine Gardens has resources, classes, workshops and events to help you create a beautiful space of your own.

Gardening at Elevation

Gardening at elevation in the Colorado Rocky Mountains can be tough. Located at 8,200′ Betty Ford Alpine Gardens is here to provide Colorado-specific garden resources that inform, inspire and help you create a garden or outdoor space that brings joy and beauty, while also water-wise, and for the community and the environment.

Turf Replacement

Looking to replace your turf with a more sustainable and appealing landscape? Get the latest information and logistics on the incentivized Colorado State turf replacement program as proposed by house bill 22-1151.

Visit the Colorado Water and Conservation Board’s website to keep up to date with how you can receive state funding to revision your home landscape.

The Eagle River Coalition and Eagle County Conservation District also run the new Beyond Lawn program to help incentivize turf reduction. Check out their info on the rebate program.

Recommended Resources

Explore these resources to help motivate you and get you started on garden design ideas, plant selection and how to begin creating your new turf replacement garden.

Water Wise Landscaping & Xeriscaping Resources

Explore the resources of Colorado State University’s Master Gardener Program for information on how to transform your landscape into a water efficient landscape with garden design ideas, plant suggestions, soil amendments and so much more.

Bulk Seed for Large Area Renovation

Looking to cover a large area and don’t want to spend big bucks on it? Check out Applewood Seeds out of Arvada, CO for custom seed blends and tons of pre-made seed blends for any type of region that will help to cover large blank areas or fill in the little blank spots in your garden.

Guide to High Elevation Gardening

This 24 page guide touches on everything about gardening in high elevation regions in Colorado. From landscape design methods to pest management. There is something for everyone to learn from The Colorado Native Plant Society’s Native Plant Guide for the Mountains.

Digital Tools for Designing a Water Wise Garden

While the Water Wise Garden Planner website is catered towards gardening in California, it is an amazing digital tool to help you see the processes that go into designing a wonderful garden from start to finish. Providing many different garden styles, themes and the appropriate plants for each different style, everyone can find some great information and inspiration from Water Wise Garden Planner.

Colorado Plant Select

Interested in learning more about water wise plants to fill your vacant garden space? PlantSelect plants are born and bred to thrive in Colorado Landscapes. Help diversify your garden with resilient plants by visiting PlantSelect.

Deer Resistant Plants

While deer resistant gardening is challenging, CSU Extension and Plant Talk have a quick read article to help you create a garden design that is less attractive for those pesky deer to munch on. This information on deer-resistant plants is great for ideas to begin planting a more deer resilient garden.

Plant Something Colorado

Get a plethora of information about gardening from your local experts as well as information on where you can shop for your plant nursery needs. Visit Plant Something Colorado and help create and cultivate a more beautiful Colorado.

American Horticultural Society

For over 100 years the American Horticultural Society has been a leading resource in providing information, education and inspiration to gardens all over the US. Visit the American Horticultural Society’s website to gain access to podcasts, learn about different groups and societies, read blogs and learn more about how you can get involved in gardening in your local area.

Plant Identification App

Looking for some help to identify plants on the go? PlantSnap is a great app to begin your botanical journey to identifying plants with your mobile device.

Instantly identify over 600,000 types of plants: flowers, trees, succulents, mushrooms, cacti and more.

PlantSnap App

OUR AREAS OF FOCUS

IN SITU CONSERVATION

Working with plants in their natural setting is always a priority.

Important Plant Areas

Identifying the most important alpine plant communities is critical to understanding conservation priorities. Important Plant Areas (IPA’s) are areas with high species richness as well as areas with rare and threatened species.

Monitoring and Understanding

Plant monitoring techniques are used to gain an understanding of population changes year by year.

EX SITU CONSERVATION

In contrast to work conducted in the wild population, ex situ efforts focus on creating conservation collections in the botanical garden setting, such as banking seed and propagation studies

Seed Banking

Banking seed from wild populations is an important step for preserving species for the next generation

Propagation Studies

Working to understand how to grow plants from seed is critical to their conservation.

OUR EXPERTS

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Nicola Ripley

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Nicola has a BS in Biology and an MS in Ecology. Nicola has traveled widely giving talks, collecting seed and studying alpine flora.

PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

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DATA & RESOURCES

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Your support creates real impact

Conserving plants.
Inspiring futures.

From research and conservation to education and community programs-your generosity helps protect alpine plants and the planet.

500+

Rare alpine plant
species conserver

12,000+

Students engaged
through our programs

35

Rare alpine plant
species conserver

500+

Rare alpine plant
species conserver

COLORADO ALPINE ECOFLORA PROJECT

Join us in an e ort to document alpine plant diversity! As part of the first objective of the Alpine Strategy: to understand and documentalpine plant diversity, we are interested in knowing where alpine plants are, and when they are blooming. To this end, we developed the Colorado Alpine EcoFlora Project, a community-science botany project powered by iNaturalist, the free, easy-to-use nature identification app. The two goals of this project are: 1. Increase awareness of and appreciation for alpine plants in Colorado; and 2. Obtain research-grade observational data from around the state that will help us understand distributions of alpine plants.eff

Betty Ford Alpine Gardens

Gardening & Landscaping

Resources

Gardening in high altitude climates

Gardening at Elevation

Turf Replacement

Recommended Resources

Water Wise Landscaping & Xeriscaping Resources

Bulk Seed for Large Area Renovation

Guide to High Elevation Gardening

Digital Tools for Designing a Water Wise Garden

Colorado Plant Select

Deer Resistant Plants

Plant Something Colorado

American Horticultural Society

Plant Identification App

Recommended Reading List

OUR AREAS OF FOCUS

IN SITU CONSERVATION

EX SITU CONSERVATION

OUR EXPERTS

Nicola Ripley

PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

DATA & RESOURCES

Your support creates real impact

Conserving plants. Inspiring futures.

500+

12,000+

35

500+

COLORADO ALPINE ECOFLORA PROJECT

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Conserving plants.
Inspiring futures.