`Crevice garden and secret-garden path in Mike Kintgen's garden

Mike Kintgen’s garden includes a ribbon-like crevice garden in the buffalograss lawn — a crevice design unlike any I’ve seen. … Read More

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August 10, 2026

Horticulturist Mike Kintgen‘s home garden was on the Open Days Tour back in June. I’d had the pleasure of seeing Mike’s garden a couple years ago, and it was great to visit again. He’s added a ribbon-like crevice garden in his front lawn — a crevice design unlike any I’ve seen.

Look at it snaking its way through buffalograss turf, studded with little bouquets of flowers.

Mike’s foundation bed is atypical of most suburban homes. Bermed up, it’s packed with strappy yucca spheres, grassy texture, tall Salvia ringens that harmonizes with the house color, and mats of low creepers.

A closer look

Those yuccas! I love them mingling with small conifers. (Taking notes for my future garden…)

Salvia and yucca

One more

Sulphur buckwheat showing off sunset hues

Doll house yuccas and euphorbia on the left

Around the corner, a sinewy old juniper adds a sense of age to the garden.

Jerusalem sage glows against a dark-green dwarf pinon pine.

Here’s the wider view of the dwarf pinon and Jerusalem sage.

Flowering broom is a green mound frosted with golden yellow.

There’s Mike in his trademark cowboy hat in the background.

Yarrow and yucca

A massive I’ll-poke-yer-eyes-out yucca (not the official name) guards the gate into the back garden. Asked for the ID, Mike said, “It’s probably a hybrid. I grew it from seed as Yucca faxoniana, but it’s kind of weird.”

On the back patio, Mike arranges pots of tender agaves and other succulents for a spiky summer display. He hauls them all into his basement for the winter, which must be quite a job.

Larkspur adds seasonal color — still going in June here in Colorado.

Mike keeps a small lawn in back, generously bordered by a screening mix of trees, shrubs, and perennials.

Hypertufa pots of alpine plants add accents along the shady path.

Back here, a drooping conifer — weeping Alaska cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkatensis ‘Pendula’) — makes a green arch. This tree is “surprising adaptable to the Front Range,” Mike says.

And a silvery pine — gray pine from California (Pinus sabiniana) — shines in the dappled light.

The tree-lined path may be my favorite part of Mike’s garden. It’s like a secret garden…

…with treasures to discover along the way.

Plus the shade is nice on a hot summer day.

Caper spurge

Rose campion and yucca, another inspiring combo

Up next: The garden of Denver’s most well-known plant explorer, Panayoti Kelaidis. For a look back at Steve Aegerter’s flowering dry garden, click here.

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The post Crevice garden and secret-garden path in Mike Kintgen’s garden appeared first on Digging.