Visiting Northern Colorado--Yampa River Botanic Park

No plant enthusiast passing through Steamboat Springs, Colorado should miss the Yampa River Botanic Park. Website

The Painter's Garden

This gem is snuggled along the Yampa River on the north side of the city of Steamboat Springs. The six acres are divided into dozens of individual gardens, tended or supported by the Steamboat Springs community. Some have themes--the Blue Garden, the Butterfly Garden, the Painter's Garden--some just feature plants the gardener loves.


This, for example, is the Crevice Garden:

Here are other views of the Park:

A lawn for events

A frog by the pond

The love applied to the garden is obvious. These plants are cherished!

Petunias, marigolds, ornamental cabbages...what else do you see?

Beautiful monardas, red blanket flower, a cultivated onion in seed,
 and a few yellow yarrow

But Steamboat Springs is at 6,880 feet in the Colorado Rockies. They have only two months--60 days--when the nighttime temperature stays warm enough not to create a killing frost (below about 28o  F for more than a few minutes). Days can reach the 90s (o F), nights are 20-30o  cooler and it can be absolutely rainless for weeks. Lots of ordinary plants die under those conditions. The Botanic Park is a showplace of mountain gardens, making the profusion of flowers even more impressive.

The plants have name lables, generally accurate and near the right plant. Plants routinely get ahead of the staff at botanic gardens, leaving tags behind. Yampa's tags are better than the average botanic garden.

The plants range from ordinary garden plants--impressive at this elevation--to natives. Lots of diversity.

A grand bed of stonecrops (Sedum sp.) and pinks (Dianthus sp.)

Stonecrops and pinks

And this is yampa. The botanic park is named after the river and the river is named after the plant, so the plant in the park brings it full circle. Yampa is Perideridia gairdneri, a little umbel (carrot family, Apiaceae) that was an important food for the Utes and other tribes in the region.

yampa, Perideridia gairdneri

The Penstemon Garden is an exuberant bed of beardtongues, genus Penstemon. I particularly liked this red one:

AND it is hummingbird territory. All summer they have hummingbirds in the Hummingbird Garden-- and everywhere else. Hummers are a treat to watch. 

Humming bird on monarda, Yampa River Botanic Park

If you are in Steamboat Springs during the summer, don't miss the Yampa River Botanic Park. No excuses: it is free and open from dawn to dusk.

(If you know the Park well, you'll spot that my pictures could not have been taken in 2017. You are right, some are from as long ago as 2012. I keep going back!)

Comments and corrections welcome.

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist

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