The Summer Concert Series makes warm Colorado evenings magical.</p> This season, three standout shows still have tickets available: Allen Stone with The Burroughs</strong>, Soccer Mommy</strong> with Jawdropped</strong> and Gregory Porter</strong>. Each brings a completely different sound, but they all share the rare kind of intimacy you only get in the UMB Amphitheater at Denver Botanic Gardens, surrounded by lush gardens and summer twilight. </p> On July 8</strong>, Allen Stone</strong></a> brings his unmistakable blend of soul, funk and raw vocal power. He can turn a summer crowd into a choir—equal parts groove and heart. Expect big energy, big voice and a show that feels both polished and spontaneous under the evening sky.</p> The next night, July 9</strong>, Soccer Mommy</strong></a> </strong>takes the stage with her signature indie-rock sound—introspective, guitar-driven and emotionally precise. Her songs capture a quiet intensity that feels especially right in a close setting like the Gardens. This is a show for anyone who likes their summer nights with a little shimmer and honesty mixed in.</p> Later in the season, on August 10</strong>, Gregory Porter</strong></a> shares his rich, velvet baritone and timeless jazz-soul style. Influenced by Southern Gospel sound and his mother’s Nat King Cole record collection, h</span>is emotional storytelling creates the perfect late-summer music and nature synergy. </p> Part of what makes concert nights special isn’t just the lineup, but the experience itself: picnics on the grass, golden-hour light moving through the trees and feeling like you've been transported somewhere else for a few hours while still tucked in the heart of the city. Tickets for these few remaining shows won’t stay available for long, and if the past is any indication, they’ll disappear quickly once word gets out.</p> Summer always goes too quickly—but these nights at the Gardens are the ones worth catching before they’re gone. Get tickets for the Summer Concert Series</a>. </p>
Have you ever wondered what life would be like without pollinators? Without them, the diversity of fruits, vegetables and flowering plants would decline dramatically. Imagine fewer flowers along sidewalks and trails, fewer home gardens in full bloom, and produce sections at the grocery store looking a little less familiar than they do today.</p> When you create a pollinator-friendly garden you are helping your own garden as well as the global ecosystem.</p> Here are some easy steps to make your garden more vibrant and sustainable – and friendly to bees, beetles, flies, moths, butterflies, hummingbirds and bats:</p> Step 1: Go Natural</h4> Ween your garden off chemicals and pesticides. In addition to the cost, these chemicals can kill more than you bargained for or, even worse, lead to resistance through overuse. Ditch ‘em. We want an inviting environment for critters. </p> Try some of these strategies:</strong></p> Use compost and mulch for soil health to attract beneficial insects like ladybugs, lacewings and hoverflies.</li> Use natural sprays like a simple soap spray, garlic-mint repellent, hot pepper spray or vegetable oil spray.</li> Get rid of pests by hand. Pull weeds and manually remove caterpillars, beetles and hornworms. </li> </ul> Step 2: Plant Strategically</h4> Feature diverse, native plants. Plant in clusters that grow continuously throughout the seasons. Here are some suggestions, by season:</p> Spring</strong></p> Rocky Mountain columbine (Aquilegia caerulea</em>)</li> Golden currant (Ribes aureum</em>)</li> Prairie smoke (Geum triflorum</em>)</li> Desert beardtongue (Penstemon pseudospectabilis</em>)</li> </ul> Summer</strong></p> Chocolate flower (Berlandiera lyrata</em>)</li> Blanket flower (Gaillardia aristata</em>)</li> Blue mist penstemon (Penstemon virens</em>)</li> Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta</em>)</li> Common yarrow (Achillea millefolium</em>)Fall</strong></li> Rubber rabbitbrush (Ericameria nauseosa</em>)</li> Little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium</em>)</li> Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximiliana</em>) </li> </ul> Step 3: Focus on Habitat</h4> If you want pollinators to be guests in your garden, be a good host. Leave some bare ground patches for ground-nesting bees. Leave a pile of twigs or small branches for beetles. And a bee hotel or a bat box can be a fun DIY project that will give your garden some personality. Visit the Birds and Bees Walk</a> to see some in person.</p> Additionally, think about water supply: shallow water bird baths for hummingbirds and puddlers for butterflies. Check out the Shop at the Gardens</a> to see what’s in stock—no admission is necessary to visit the gift shop.</p> Even small changes in a home landscape can help sustain biodiversity. </p> Celebrate pollinators with us at Big Day of Bugs</a>, Friday, June 26</strong>! Fun activities are planned from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. and included with admission.</p>
2025 was our final year of support from the National Science Foundation funded CLIMUSH project. This project – named from a portmanteau of “climate” and “mushroom” – sought to understand how the environment affects the diversity and reproduction of macrofungi: the fungi that produce mushrooms and other macroscopic reproductive structures. This collaboration consisted of five other institutions and principal investigators that studied plots in eight ecoregions across North America (See Map). The goal was to examine fungal diversity using DNA sequencing techniques from oak, conifer and grassland habitats by sampling soil, litter, roots, leaves and spores in the air after rainfall. </p> At Denver Botanic Gardens, our role involved plot sampling and sample processing for two of the nine sites: Niwot Ridge, the primary research site of CU Boulder’s Mountain Research Station, and the Konza Prairie Biological Station at Kansas State University.</p> To access the Colorado site, we took a four-wheel drive vehicle five miles up to Niwot Ridge, then hiked more than a mile to our plot at 11,000 feet, above tree line in the alpine zone. Early season sampling involved snowy fields and inclement weather, but on sunny days the view was hard to beat.</p> In Kansas, our plots consisted of oak woodland or grasslands representing both undisturbed and disturbed (controlled burn) habitats. Mycology graduate students Justin Loucks and Jess Loeffler assisted in sampling these sites for soil, litter, root and leaf tissue and spore samples. We also received additional help from volunteers and fellow mycologists from the region who joined us to collect mushrooms during the growing season.</p> As this project nears the end, volumes of data still need to be analyzed. One scientific paper documenting the importance of science like ours</a> has already been published and several more are currently being reviewed. We are currently working on a paper to document the mushroom diversity out of Konza, which would be the first of its kind. Our lab has also been exploring the diversity and distribution of the Thelephorales across North America.</p> The CLIMUSH project is one of the most ambitious studies of macrofungal diversity ever undertaken and has given us the best dataset to examine the patterns of diversity for all kinds of fungi across this continent.Although Denver Botanic Gardens has completed its part in this project, our part in the ongoing effort to document fungal diversity continues. </p>
