Since we have such long winters, it is truly important for a garden to be created with year-round interest and beauty. Unfortunately, most gardens are designed to be beautiful just in the spring and summer, but the best landscape designs will be beautiful in the fall and winter, too. Altgelt remarks, “This winter interest that is so important here comes about in three ways.”

For Tom Altgelt, the first step is to sculpt the shapes and forms of the earth itself. “Ideally, the bare landscape will feel as though it has been sculpted by wind and water. We want the energetics of this sculpture to have a pleasing and dynamic flow and movement, so the eye will perceive forms that are beautiful, animated, moving, uplifting as it is animating us.” By artistically shaping the bare land and rock formations, a beauty can emerge that will last through the seasons.

Tom will often incorporate a simulated “arroyo”, or dry stream bed, which can be carved into a rolling landscape. Rock outcroppings can appear just as you would see them in the mountains. “Rock formations are often found where weathering has exposed stone. Here we are at the foot of the ‘Rocky Mountains’ so rocks are an important naturally-occurring element.”

Once the landscape is sculpted artistically, the next step is to include some evergreen plants into the sculpture, providing color during the cold months. Both dwarf and larger evergreens may be used to accentuate rock formations. “There are also various native drought tolerant broadleaf and blooming evergreen plants like the creeping mahonia that relate beautifully to boulders.”

And third is to utilize deciduous plants that are interesting andbeautiful without their leaves, incorporating their winter forms and colors into the overall sculpture. “The red twig and yellow twig dogwoods have lovely colored branches after the leaves fall. Other plants can be chosen for the sculptural qualities of their trunks or branching habits, so without any leaves they can still have a beautiful form.” Tom gives the example of the service berry, with its beautiful multiple trunks and display of branches. Also, the Canadian redbud has a beautiful sculptural form in the cold season.

Altgelt comments that there are fewer trees and shrubs that will grow here, with our harsh climate, compared to New England or Germany where Tom began his landscape design career. “At the same time, It is remarkable what we can do here with perennials. After the long winter, they will come back up again in the spring, and this is an important component of beautiful gardens here.” When Tom first came to the Denver/Boulder area from Germany, he was surprised at how little attention is often paid to perennials in this region. When utilized artistically into a landscape, perennials can really bring a garden to life!

“Another consideration in the Front Range is the water feature. In our arid climate, we have naturally occurring water only rarely, which makes it special.” Because water is almost a “missing element” here, Tom likes to give it a prominent place in a Front Range garden.

Many property owners in the Boulder/Denver region are most interested in celebrating locally-inspired landscape designs. However, for some it can be even more interesting to utilize elements foreign to Colorado. “We can find places where foreign modalities would be wonderful to bring in. I recently designed a Moorish garden in Colorado. It was a small rather urban lot, and we weren’t trying for a natural theme, yet it was a garden that was adapted to make it work under Colorado conditions.”

Altgelt then adds various man-made artistic elements-sculpture, a bench, a gazebo, a fence-which can add the human touch to the beauty of nature. Just as the house was added to the natural setting, these other man-made elements can harmonize with the sculpted earth, rocks and plants, as well as the architecture. “We can accept and respond to and elaborate on the beauty that was here to begin with, and the result is a uniquely Colorado garden.

Do you want to be certain your landscape is designed to fully meet the challenges of a Denver or Front Range landscape? Browse through www.altgelt.com to see an astonishing range of Denver CO area garden designs, or view this Colorado landscape design video with relaxing background music.