November 12, 2024
While in Denver this fall, I found Colorado gardeners to be warm and generous about sharing their creations and eager to make introductions to other gardeners they admire. That’s how I came to meet plantsman Kelly Grummons, co-owner of specialty nursery Prairie Storm Nursery. How, exactly? After I visited new friend Heidi Harris’s garden one afternoon, she arranged for us to have a tour of Kelly’s home garden in nearby Lakewood.
Kelly is esteemed as a horticulturist and cactus breeder who’s introduced many plants into the Plant Select program, “the country’s leading brand of plants designed to thrive in the high plains and intermountain regions.” He also runs a home-based, mail-order retail nursery of cold-hardy cactus and succulents. My husband tagged along and took this photo of Kelly, Heidi (aka Denver Dry Garden on Instagram), and me. It was fun to join these two gardening friends as Kelly gave us a full tour and showed Heidi what was new.
But first we were greeted by Baby, who was down for some tummy rubs.
What a cute floof!
As Kelly led us through his garden, I paused to admire a glorious sea kale (Crambe maritima), whose ruffled, silver-blue leaves sprawled around a pocked red boulder. Seafoam pots echo the kale’s eye-catching color while elevating interesting cacti.
Spiny texture
Kelly uses hypertufa pots throughout the garden too.
Along one path, potted-up agaves and yuccas await buyers.
What beautiful symmetry, color, and spines on this agave. Kelly sells a surprising number that are winter hardy in Colorado.
An agave in flower towered over us. Agaves bloom just once, after many years, and then die, but they go out with a bang.
Rabbitbrush softens Kelly’s spiky garden and was showing off nearly fluorescent flowers.
Here’s an interesting plant I’d never heard of: bells-of-Ireland (Molucella laevis), which bears a passing resemblance to the suckered arms of an octopus.
Plums were ripening, and Kelly offered us a taste.
Kale and eupatorium (I think) make a pretty fall combo.
Hummingbird trumpet and a creeping silver juniper are fire and ice.
Rabbitbrush’s golden yellow is good against the silver juniper too.
It was really putting on a show in late September.
Aster, a fall favorite
Yucca and juniper make a silver-green color echo.
Lion’s tail stood tall near the fence, offering its tiered orange flowers.
Agastache looking gorgeous. This is a dry-loving plant I wish I could grow successfully in Austin, but it doesn’t love our unremitting humidity. Believe me, I’ve tried.
An orange-belted bumblebee caught my eye as it worked the agastache.
Quite handsome
I spy a second bumble too.
One of Kelly’s potted succulents, a study in silver and copper
A pretty silver-blue yucca
You can tell this is a dog-lover’s garden.
A metal arbor marks the entrance to Kelly’s vegetable garden…
…where a cheerful garden sign hangs from an old ladder.
Veggies grow in big tubs — tree nursery pots, I think — that function as raised beds.
The day’s harvest
Tomato blossoms
A succulent dish perches at eye level on a metal trellis.
Next we walked through a greenhouse packed with prickly pears. With pads ranging from green to purple to silver, from spineless to furry, from upright to sprawling, what a marvelous variety of opuntias Kelly is growing.
I love prickly pears and wish I had more sun — and no destructive, antlering deer — so I could grow more of them.
Hairy!
They are all so good.
Cholla has a place here too.
Back in the garden proper, I admired a fluffy pine perched on a berm, with lavender-tinged rocks and pink salvia around it.
The rocky berm is mostly planted with mounding and creeping plants that appreciate exceptional drainage.
I love this ridged, square hypertufa pot, the work of Domenique Turnbull near Colorado Springs. I’d admired Domenique’s planters at SummerHome Garden and at Denver Botanic Gardens, and so I immediately recognized his work at Kelly’s.
Along the foundation of Kelly’s home, he planted a bold assortment of yucca, cholla, and agaves, accented with rocks and a container featuring sticks-on-fire.
A potted agave stands out against electric-yellow rabbitbrush.
More beautiful agaves, with one in its death throes
My thanks to Kelly for the wonderful garden visit and the opportunity to learn more about all the marvelous cold-hardy cacti and other plants he’s growing in Colorado!
Up next: A fall hike in Eldorado Canyon near Boulder. For a look back at the Denver dry garden of Heidi Harris, click here.
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