CC Flower Beds Win Award for Fifth Consecutive Year - Colorado College

For the fifth consecutive year, Colorado College has won top honors in Colorado Springs’ “Springs in Bloom” competition. CC received first place in the service organization category for the college’s two showcase flower beds, located in the Cascade Avenue median between Uintah and Cache La Poudre streets. Each 1,200-square-foot bed contains 4,096 plants, for a display totaling 8,192 plants.
The two long, rectangle beds are mirror images of each other. This year they feature multicolored geraniums, pennisetum, salvia, marigolds, purple petunias, and dusty miller laid out in a series of large triangles. The flowers are planted in early May, with CC horticulturalist Cecelia Gonzales and assistant horticulturalist Kyle Larsen using strings and measuring tapes to align the plants. The two horticulturalists joke that “the CC growing season is from Commencement in May to Homecoming in October.”
In previous years, other highly visible flowerbeds at the college also were planted with annuals; this spring, however, they were planted with xeric perennials in an effort to use less water. Four smaller flowerbeds, two each on Cascade and Nevada avenues, feature low-water-use plants such as hillside creeper, cherry skullcap, butterfly weed, ice plant and fine line buckthorn shrubs. Additionally, annuals along the south side of the Worner Campus Center, which faces Cache La Poudre Street have been replaced with xeric plants, Gonzales said.