The Suspended Gardens in Crested Butte

Recently I was in Crested Butte, Colorado and the "Suspended Gardens" were spectacular!

The secret to their lushness comes from a variety of factors.  The Sphagnum Moss that line the wire baskets is the bogs in New Zealand.  This special moss holds 20 times their weight in water.  The special soil is imported from Canada, Vermiculite from Virginia and special seedlings from southern California along with hybrids originally from Europe. 

The baskets are made over in Hotchkiss for it is a much warmer climate.  And if you can believe, it takes three months for the baskets to fully fill out!  I love the mass of alyssum in this particular basket.

The baskets are designed a year in advance and the designers draw ideas from the annual plant trials at CSU in Ft. Collins, Colorado.   The location of where the basket will hang in town is taken into consideration.  Looking around Crested Butte, they did a great job, the flowers really compliment the building colors.  The growers at these plant trials even look at color trends.  Pantone this year named "Tangerine" the top color of the year.  And I can testify to that.  I have seen it in the design trade and this last October my husband bought me a gorgeous tangerine colored leather Fratelli Rossetti purse in Rome.

See how the lilac and pink flowers pick up the colors on the trim of the building.

Great choices in flowers include pansies, petunias, trailing geraniums, violas, alyssum, nasturtium, lobelia and dracaena.  It is a a time consuming process to create one of these baskets but the end results are sure worth the effort!