Great Garden Series

Creating the Best Garden You've Ever Had in Your Entire Lifetime - Guaranteed(ish) with Tom Bartels and Darrin Parmenter (aka The Garden Guys)

The Garden Guys will share helpful hints on how to plant a garden that you need to weed only once a year, harvest lots of food, and bring endless smiles to you and your friends.

Darrin Parmenter is the Western Region Director with CSU Extension, overseeing 15 counties across the western slope of Colorado. For 15 plus years he was the La Plata County Director and Horticulturist, and was fortunate enough to be one of the founding members of the Durango Botanic Gardens in 2010. He has a BS in Horticulture from Montana State University and an MS in Horticulture from Cornell University. In 2021 alongside fellow gardener and good friend, Tom Bartels, Darrin started the radio show (and subsequent podcast) the 'Garden Guys'. If he's not traveling across western Colorado, you could probably find him in his home garden cursing the pill bugs or talking to his tomatoes and peppers. He is a Durango native. Tom Bartels is a worm rancher who grows vegetables in Durango. He has been teaching others how to do the same for the past ten years or so… Tom has a habit of eating twice, sometimes three times a day and likes how consuming the various food stuffs allow him to keep puttering around figuring how things work. (From Darrin): Tom is one the most passionate and skilled gardeners I’ve ever known. His ability to take huge topics like climate change, or food insecurity, or the science of soil and whittle it down to the love of a carrot, or a stalk of corn, or an earthworm is a gift very few are ever blessed with.

Great Garden events happen every fourth Wednesday of the month, April-September, presented by the Durango Botanic Gardens, CSU Extension Office, & Durango Public Library. For more details visit www.durangobotanicgardens.org/events.

Upcoming Events