Betty Ford Alpine
Gardens
Vail, Colorado
August 2010
This is an extremely
interesting little garden. The gardens opened to the public
in 1988. At more than 8,000 feet in elevation, it is the
highest public garden in the United States. It covers only
about an acre of land, most a steep hillside, but more than
3,000 species of alpine plants are displayed. The garden is
surrounded by alpine forest and ski areas. In the picture
below you can just see a garden entrance sign in the bottom
left corner.
The garden’s trail system is designed as a series of long
switchbacks, which provides a lot of trailside garden space
and makes the garden feel much larger than one acre.
The main entrance is very pretty, but unimposing. The
landscaping blends into the surrounding landscape. Looking
at it gives no impression of the gardens inside, which I
think is a positive. It makes the gardens themselves feel
even more special when you arrive at them.
Inside this main entrance is a perennial bed, demonstrating
perennials that do well in this alpine environment.
Although the bed is small, it explodes with color and is a
great contrast to the dark evergreens surrounding it. There
is also a very nice interpretive sign explaining the
effects of alpine conditions on plants.
From this point you begin to slowly climb and the garden
quickly becomes more alpine in feel with rocky slopes and
gravelly beds.
As you continue up, there is an amazing array of plants,
tucked into rocks or spreading across gravel. Most are
small, ground-hugging forms with small or few flowers but
the variety of colors, textures and forms is as exciting as
flowers.
With such densely planted beds of small plants labeling
must be a challenge, but they have done very well. They’ve
used a mix of sizes of plant labels so I found the labeling
unobtrusive while still informative.
The garden features alpine plants from around the world.
It’s very interesting to see how similar in growth form
alpine plants are, regardless of their origin. Here is an
area devoted to South African plants. Here, and in other
areas, the garden makes good use of troughs to display a
wider variety of plants.
Water is also a major feature of the garden. There is a
stream with several waterfalls, as well as ponds and
marshes. This diversity of habitats adds to the variety of
plants that can be grown and adds great visual interest.
For such a tiny garden, the richness of plant diversity
displayed is amazing. And the density of the plantings
means you can spend a lot of time looking at each bed if
you want to see every plant. It’s a nice garden for a
leisurely stroll through alpine woods, but has enough
interpretation and an interesting enough plant collection,
that spending more time can be very rewarding. We went
through the entire garden twice, seeing much more the
second time. I’m sure we could have found even more on a
third walk-thru.
Click
here
to see more photos of the
Betty Ford Alpine Garden.
Click here to visit the website of the Betty Ford
Alpine Gardens.