Red Butte Garden boasts beauty in spring

Spring just would not be spring without a visit to Red Butte Garden and Arboretum. Few places in the state shrug off the vestiges of winter and wrap themselves with the colors and textures of spring like this wonderful garden.

If you have never been, treat yourself to an extraordinary garden treasure. The gardens are billed as a part of the University of Utah," a nonprofit organization located in Salt Lake City. With more than 100 acres of display and natural gardens, walking paths and natural areas with hiking trails, Red Butte Garden is the largest botanical and ecological center in the Intermountain West that tests, displays, and interprets regional horticulture.

For now, focus on the displays.

Tour the 18 acres of display gardens and see spring as you might never have seen it. Fortunately, it is not a static planting of a few trees and shrubs, but it is a living, dynamic display of some of Utah's best plants.

As much as you might enjoy strolling in these gardens, make this next visit educational. Grab your camera and a notebook and visit the gardens with the idea of learning what to use and how to grow better landscapes in Utah.

Enter the Cottam Visitors Center, climb the stairs and look through the glass wall at the Hemingway Four Seasons garden. The stunning daffodil drifts cover the hills with waves of yellow and lead your eyes to the beautiful mountains.

Enjoy the wonderful spring containers created for the Courtyard Garden. Tulips, daffodils and many other bulbs show their beauty surrounded by pansies, flowering kale and other colorful spring blooming flowers.

Interspersed here and throughout the garden are stunning selections of spring flowering trees. As a part of their arboretum mission, the garden has many different kinds of trees, and even better, it has many of the latest and best cultivars of these trees.

Among the choice specimens are the crabapples. If you are thinking of messy, fruit-dropping trees that you can't wait to purge from your landscape, think again.

Make notes and take pictures of these because they are most likely persistent-fruited trees that do not drop fruit but hold it until the birds eat it during the winter.

Among the blooming crabapples are Calocarpa with pink buds and large white flowers; Candied Apple with showy pink blossoms; Sargent, one of the smallest trees with pink buds and white flowers; and Centurion with red flowers.

One "don't miss" display area is the Dumke Floral Walk. Skillfully interlaced among the native Gambel oaks are a plethora of plant treasures of all kinds.