Local couple shares love of gardening with community

BY ELISABETH SLAY ESLAY@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

At the intersection of Dartmouth Avenue and Bannock Street sits a blue house with a yellow door surrounded by a vast garden with vine arches, vegetable plants and a towering sun ower forest.

e blue house with the yellow door is home to Englewood residents and married couple of 17 years Adam and Devon Knudson, who originally met in a hot tub in their shared apartment complex 21 years ago.

Devon, who comes from a long line of farmers, said she has always loved gardening and being one with nature. She said one day Adam “threw some packets of sun ower seeds” out in their garden without her knowledge and she was shocked to suddenly see a bunch of sun owers in her yard.

“We started mostly gardening food and it’s just something we both have been interested in,” Devon said.

For 12 years she and Adam have grown their own food and expressed their creativity through their everchanging garden.

“[A garden] can kind of be whatever you want it to be. It’s a way for adults to play and explore,” she said. “It’s much more interesting than just grass.”

She said the garden gives her more motivation to enjoy the outdoors surrounding her house, rather than seeing the maintenance of that landscape as a chore.

“It’s fun because you get to experiment and learn. You spend more time outside because [say] you started a seedling in February and [you’re] watching this tomato plant that you started to grow and get big [and] it’s fun to nurture something like that and get the rewards from it,” Devon said. e couple said all sorts of creatures help their garden grow including birds, butter ies and spiders. Adam said he often explores the garden and photographs di erent plants and animals.

Adam, who doesn’t have a gardening background quite like his wife, said he loves how the garden changes and enjoys the di erent wildlife that visit.

“It kind of reminds me of a coral reef a little bit. It’s kind of neat how it all looks and it’s very interactive and you can go through, and there’s a lot of insects and a lot of things visit the garden,” Adam said.

“You feel more of a connection with nature with gardening and this being such a busy area it’s not very nature friendly and not very pedestrian friendly,” Devon said.

She said one reason the couple continue to grow sun owers is because they make people happy.

“You see people just walk back and forth [through the sun owers] and you see the smiles,” she said. “We know the bene cial e ects of spending time in nature, and we want to help gift that to other people.” rough their garden, Devon and Adam meet many people in the community. e couple uses local resources such as the municipal wood pile, compost from their neighbors and a co ee shop to expand their garden.

“We’re meeting more of our neighbors, and it ties you more to your community,” she said. “It gives you more of an investment in your community.

In addition to gardening, the couple are also professional photographers. e photographer also appreciates the trust people put in her to be in their innermost circle on a very vulnerable day.

Devon said she knew early on she wanted to be a photographer and she especially loves photographing weddings almost as much as she loves gardening.

“It takes a special person to really love shooting weddings because you’re navigating a lot of emotions but, for me, being able to feel all those emotions and channel them through a visual medium, it feels really good to do that,” she said.

Adam said he dabbled in photography but really developed his passion for the profession after seeing how much Devon loved it.

“I feel like for lots of years we’ve done a lot of weddings together and we’ve gone through all those emotions together,” Adam said. “I think it’s been a good vehicle for our lives for a long time. It has made it so we can enjoy things like gardening.

Both Devon and Adam are certied scuba instructors, and they often combine their passion for photography and scuba diving.

“Our photography has also turned into content creation, so we do videography work right now,” Adam said. “We’ve been working with a lot of individuals from Craig Hospital.” e couple works with a program called Denver Adapted Divers, which teaches those who’ve sustained serious injuries to scuba dive. While Adam instructs, Devon lms and photographs individuals underwater.

“It started out working with veterans so lots of amputees, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries,” she said. “ ere’s some new and exciting research talking about what scuba diving can do for people that live in chronic pain.” e couple is happy to see they’ve already in uenced others in their gardening journey such as their neighbors Blake Aiken and Stephanie Delashmit- Aiken who became friends with the couple and were inspired to create their own sun ower jungle.

She enjoys combining her two skill sets to showcase how people bene t from scuba diving.

“It’s a very incredible thing to be able to document people putting that kind of trust into other people,” Devon said.

Going forward Devon and Adam hope to continue exploring their creativity through their garden and creating a website to share their knowledge with others.

“It’s really rewarding and if other people are curious just start small. Some of the best gardening advice I’ve gotten [is] act o education not excitement,” Devon said. “I would love to see it span and make this Sun ower Alley or Sun ower Street.”