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Spring just would not be spring without a visit to Red Butte Garden and Arboretum. Few places in the state shrug off the vestiges of winter and wrap themselves with the colors and textures of spring like this wonderful garden.
If you have never been, treat yourself to an extraordinary garden treasure. The gardens are billed as a part of the University of Utah," a nonprofit organization located in Salt Lake City. With more than 100 acres of display and natural gardens, walking paths and natural areas with hiking trails, Red Butte Garden is the largest botanical and ecological center in the Intermountain West that tests, displays, and interprets regional horticulture.
For now, focus on the displays.
Tour the 18 acres of display gardens and see spring as you might never have seen it. Fortunately, it is not a static planting of a few trees and shrubs, but it is a living, dynamic display of some of Utah's best plants.
As much as you might enjoy strolling in these gardens, make this next visit educational. Grab your camera and a notebook and visit the gardens with the idea of learning what to use and how to grow better landscapes in Utah.
Enter the Cottam Visitors Center, climb the stairs and look through the glass wall at the Hemingway Four Seasons garden. The stunning daffodil drifts cover the hills with waves of yellow and lead your eyes to the beautiful mountains.
Enjoy the wonderful spring containers created for the Courtyard Garden. Tulips, daffodils and many other bulbs show their beauty surrounded by pansies, flowering kale and other colorful spring blooming flowers.
Interspersed here and throughout the garden are stunning selections of spring flowering trees. As a part of their arboretum mission, the garden has many different kinds of trees, and even better, it has many of the latest and best cultivars of these trees.
Among the choice specimens are the crabapples. If you are thinking of messy, fruit-dropping trees that you can't wait to purge from your landscape, think again.
Make notes and take pictures of these because they are most likely persistent-fruited trees that do not drop fruit but hold it until the birds eat it during the winter.
Among the blooming crabapples are Calocarpa with pink buds and large white flowers; Candied Apple with showy pink blossoms; Sargent, one of the smallest trees with pink buds and white flowers; and Centurion with red flowers.
One "don't miss" display area is the Dumke Floral Walk. Skillfully interlaced among the native Gambel oaks are a plethora of plant treasures of all kinds.
Look for the bulbs peeking out of the leaves that enrich the soil at the base of the trees. As you wander farther down the walk, these plants crescendo into stunning plantings of many colors, sizes and kinds of bulbs. Look for the stately Frittalaria or crown imperials but don't try to smell them. Their other name is apt — stink lily.
Other treasures include a few azaleas that benefit from the shade and soil of the site and add their spring color. Utah is not a prime growing area for magnolias, but the beautiful star magnolias are a treat you won't want to miss.
I always enjoy walking under the espalier fruit tree that the gardeners are developing on frames over the walk. The seasonal color is further enhanced by the white cloud-like flowers of the serviceberry trees, which are some of the nicest in the state.
No visit is complete with a trip to the original part of the garden with the stream, pond and waterfall. Spring color abounds from dozens of kinds of plants arranged in spectacular plantings around these wonderful features.
Hopefully, the camera has a full memory card, the notebook is brimming with your written ideas and you are ready to use these ideas to help you create a garden of your dreams. What a treasure to have in our state.
Garden tips and events
In addition to beauty and ideas, Red Butte has plants. Shop for them May 1-2. Friday from 3-8 p.m. (members only), Saturday, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. (open to public). Find many herbs, specialty annuals, vegetables, unusual sun and shade perennials, ornamental grasses, native and drought-tolerant plants. Due to construction of the new amphitheater, the sale is in Cottam's Grove, south of Red Butte Greenhouses. Follow the signs to the parking lot and Cottam's Grove.
