Pan's Gardens: Boulder Garden-scaper Rockstars

Our dashing GQ cover-boys, looking very sultry.

Meet Ryan Durfee and Paul Montgomery of Pan's Gardens, Boulder, Colorado, USA.

Last October I took an opportunity to work for a week for these fellas to see just how they do business, taking those lessons home to my nacent new business.  Or maybe I worked for them to assimilate thier swagger.  There's a good chance of that.

 

I need some rockin' door stickers like theirs.

Pan's is an organic company.  You've read about solarizing lawns to kill them (as opposed to hosing them with poison), now you can see it in action.  Paul and Ryan offer some incredibly efficient, tidy, and detail-oriented and mainenence service, as well as earth-conciouse installations.  The above has become a "Peasant's Garden," utilising native shrubs, if I'm not mistaken.

Pan's Gardens is bravely going places that so many are only talking about- here is a meadow-style strip recently established.  Look out for Meadows in cutting-edge progressive landscapes in future.  Folks like Ryan and Paul are bearing the weight of inventing the wheel we'll all be riding and taking for granted in future.  Read about thier philosophy and drink in their work: their website is weird inasmuch that it is not painfully commercial, but fun to peruse.

 
Ryan shows me his recent xeric installation, featuring maximum biodiversity in a small space, which means there are a dozen things in bloom, even among young plants, in October.

 It wasn't all work and drinking espresso- we cruised gardens and looked for green trouble on the streets of fair Boulder.  We even found a greenroof, and upon knocking on the front door of the house on which it grew, we found that I had consulted these folks and sold them the first plants for their roof some years ago. What fun to see how my suggestions did or didn't work.   The owner let us waddle around and have a malenky bit of a look-see.
This is us on the roof: note the refleciton of the second-storey-neighbour!

Private greenroof in Boulder, CO, excecuted by its enterprising owners. (Not to mention a frugging fantastic rock garden!)

I'll take this line to thank Paul and Ryan, as well as Ryan's family, for tolerating and kindly accomodating me.  

They do look after some beautiful places.