No Exaggeration: Cheyenne Botanic Gardens Is Tropical Oasis In Middle Of Winter

CHEYENNE — The air inside is warm and still. Yertle the turtle — a red-bellied Florida cooter — is sunning himself on a rock, neck craning toward the sun high overhead, while his brother Squirtle is hiding somewhere in the shade. 

Hard to say which is the smarter turtle.

The koi fish below Yertle do a slow-motion ballet in the stream, celebrating music only they can hear. Water plops now and again in the distance as the fish dance in the bubbling, babbling stream of this tropical paradise, an emerald jewel in a most unlikely place.

This treasure of lush tropical greenery isn’t hiding somewhere in the Caribbean or the Amazon. It’s right here in Wyoming, at the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens.

Normally, it would take a much larger city to support a botanic garden like this.

That didn't discourage Shane Smith, who not only helped found the garden, but paid for its first seeds out of his own pocket. That was 48 years ago at the then Cheyenne Community Solar Greenhouse, the botanic gardens’ precursor.

Started to provide an activity for senior citizens, as well as grow their own food, the greenhouse was a 5,000-square-foot experiment at the time. No one knew if it would survive.

“I kind of jokingly say, you’d have to be an idiot to put a botanic garden in Cheyenne, and I was that idiot,” Smith has told Cowboy State Daily. “But I sure had a good time.”

Stop And Stare

Smith’s idea proved quite popular right from the start. People would spot the greenhouse passing by, and stop not only to stare, but to offer their help.

Pretty soon, all sorts of people were volunteering. Disabled adults came to help weed the space. Teachers found a new educational space to send students. Judges even sentenced people to community service at the greenhouse. 

Smith just kept adding new things to this grand experiment, bringing more new people into his vision. Wyoming’s first community garden. A wheel-chair accessible orchard — which Smith says was the nation’s first. And then came the tropical plants.

By 1985, Smith was growing green things not many would seriously think of trying in the Rocky Mountain West on a long-term basis. Banana trees, for one. Fig and coffee trees for another. 

The tropical theme Smith started attracted attention. Today it remains a central theme of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens’ Shane Smith Grand Conservatory, open year-round for free. It doesn’t cost a thing to visit. 

“We don’t try to mimic any particular tropical landscape or geographic region,” Horticulture & Operations Supervisor Isaiah Smith told Cowboy State Daily. “It’s just tropical. Anything tropical, whatever will grow, whatever’s interesting.”

Because there’s a lot of shade in the conservatory, that tends toward understory and low-canopy types of plants. But there is one particularly big boy, towering three stories over everything, the tips of its spiky leaves nearly brushing the ceiling. 

“That’s a Mexican feather duster palm, Washingtonian robusta,” Isaiah said. “It’s actually the same species of palm that’s used in like Beverly Hills, Miami, Malibu — like those street trees you see in all the movies and the television. All the giant palm trees around the giant mansions.”

The distinctive straw skirt is formed as leaves come out, fall to the side, and then dry up. 

In nature, that straw skirt would actually reach all the way to the ground, sheltering a host of small creatures. 

Like tarantulas, and rats and things like that.

“That’s a big reason they trim the skirts like they do in California and Florida,” Isaiah said. “They do it to manage the little critters and stuff that would live in them.”

Tropical Fruit Trees For Fun

The tropical fruit trees at the garden probably get the most attention, however, Children’s Village Horticulturist Jessica Friis told Cowboy State Daily. 

There are lychee trees and mango, pineapple and banana, papaya, sugar cane, coffee, and cacao trees. They come from all over the world.

The bananas are a particular attraction right now, having just been cut last week. The large bunch of tiny bananas has been hanging in front of one of the plant walls. A mini parade of popular social media posts on Facebook has tracked their rapid progress from green to yellow.

The bananas are not a commercial variety, being just 3 inches in length. But they’re definitely much sweeter than bananas from the grocery store. The tree makes about one bunch of these delicious bananas each year.

“We let staff and volunteers take them home,” Friis said. “These ones are really sweet, and my kids love them. They’re small, so they’re kind of a good size for kids.”

The Cheyenne Botanic Garden staff have also used the bananas to make just about every type of banana bread there is, Isaiah added. And discovered that they’re all basically delicious, regardless of claims that this or that method is “the best.”

Inspiring Careers, And The Future

Friis is just one of the Wyoming minds attracted to the magic of Cheyenne’s Botanic Garden at a young age. She even credits it with inspiring her career.

“It’s a fun place to come in the winter, where you can kind of get a little bit of tropical plants and avoid the winter blues,” she said. “And that’s really why I went into this field. I was growing up in Cheyenne, where the winters are so long, and I was like, ‘Boy, it’d be nice to work in a greenhouse in January and February and still get to be around green plants.’ So that’s why I did this.”

This winter, Friis and Smith are not just dreaming of spring just around the corner. They’re also dreaming of the future, as the Cheyenne Botanic Garden is about to embark on a new master plan.

That’s going to start with a new and better pathway at the gardens, Smith said. 

“Right now, the way our sidewalks work outside, you kind of get to the end and have to turn around and come back,” Smith said. “So the master plan actually includes changing a lot of the sidewalks so that it’s easier to kind of loop around the gardens and see everything without having to stop and turn around.”

As part of that the existing irrigation and sprinkler system will also change. 

“We have trees that existed here before the park, we have turf grass, we have perennials and we have annuals, and they’re all watered off of one sprinkler, but they have different needs,” Smith said. 

These days, however, there are smart watering systems that can provide more accurate and precise water, according to individual plant needs. The new sprinklers will help make the gardens more water wise, along with changing some of the plants.

“We really want to push water-wise planting and irrigation schedules,” Smith said. “It feels wrong for us to just be blanket watering everything the same way.”

There will still be specialty gardens with plants that are more water intensive, like the rose and herb gardens, Friis added. But instead of thirsty grass in transition areas, there will be examples of water-wise selections.

“We’ve been trying to encourage more people to do that in their own yards,” Smith said. “But it’s hard for people to wrap their minds around what’s that going to look like? So maybe people can come here to see, ‘Oh, I like that plant, and that one. Maybe I’ll plant those at home.’”

Carrying On The Tradition Of Cowboy Horticulturists

Another focus of the master plan over the next 20 years will be developing spaces that have better community outreach, as well as more revenue-generating potential.

“We are a city entity,” Smith said. “We need to be able to justify ourselves. And we only get so much money from the city to support this.”

One way to do that is improve spaces like the old Peanut Pond, for example, also known as the Discovery Pond. That’s been a popular spot for weddings and other celebrations. But, right now, that area is part of a public right of way, so can have random strangers trailing into the event.

The new vision is to have a security fence with gates, so the area can be closed off for a private event, making the experience much better. The view shed would also change slightly, so that the backdrop of the garden is no longer a parking lot. 

That, however, is for a future date, Smith added, and won’t unfold until that part of the plan is funded. 

Right now, the garden that has funding is the EAT garden. When it’s completed, it will be a space where vegetables get the ultimate stress test — growing in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Cheyenne was once ground zero for such tests when it had a field research station decades ago. Cowboy horticulturists traveled the world in search of the best plant varieties for Wyoming and the West. These were often tested at Cheyenne, which was considered the “acid” test for plants that would grow in the West, because growing conditions are so challenging.

Any plant that survived Cheyenne would likely grow from Montana in the north to Amarillo in the south.

That handiwork can still be spotted in seed catalogs to this day, andSmith is excited to continue that tradition in a new garden space.

“People come here looking for answers to questions,” he said. “We live in a very difficult climate, so being able to trial and showcase new varieties of vegetables that people can be successful with will be great.”

The EAT gardens, which is already 90 to 95% funded, will feature raised beds with in-ground trials to help gardeners navigate new varieties. 

It will also include space for an outdoor classroom, including an outdoor kitchen. 

“That way we can take that next step of ‘Okay, cool, I grew an onion and I was successful. What do I do with it how?’ It would be awesome for people to be able to pull that straight out of the garden, throw it on the grill and see, ‘Here’s how you cook that up.’”

That’s just one of the many ways the pioneering legacy started by Shane Smith almost 50 years ago continues to be carried out to this day, with all kinds of new and wonderful things ahead for Wyoming’s only year-round tropical paradise.

Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com

Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.