Afton's Garden Center

Afton's Garden Center A family-owned business committed to providing a comprehensive selection of hardy plants.

They specialize in annuals, perennials, herb and vegetable starts, hanging baskets, roses, shrubs and trees.

Water Wise Perennial PlantingsAre you on watering restrictions, but want to beautify your yard? For example, in the Town...
06/16/2026

Water Wise Perennial Plantings

Are you on watering restrictions, but want to beautify your yard? For example, in the Town of Hotchkiss, residents are currently not allowed to plant lawns, and can only plant new landscape plantings with drip irrigation and drought tolerant plants. What's a frustrated home owner/gardener to do?

We can help! Here at Afton's Garden Center, we have a wide selection of drought tolerant (and mostly deer resistant) perennials, many of which are still available in 3.5" pots for just $5.50 each! Our perennial selection includes many of the most well known perennials, plus quite a few unusual and hard to find varieties (list below.)

For Water Wise plantings, we recommend adding compost and/or our Soil Pep to your soil, plus a little fertilizer, running drip irrigation, and mulching well. These measures will drastically cut down on your water usage and help insure the health of your plants. Laying down landscape fabric under the mulch will further reduce water usage, plus practically eliminate w**ding.

New plantings require more frequent, shallow waterings, say 20 minutes of drip 3 times per week. Once established, though, they will only need water once per week at most.

Is it too hot to plant now? No! Our plants are currently thriving in little black pots in full sun. Think how much happier they will be in the ground! We do recommend planting in the evening, though, to help reduce transplant shock. And keep them well watered for a couple of weeks while they are getting established. You can use waste water from your sinks, if you want to be super water conscious.

We also have a good selection of drought tolerant grasses and shrubs, which we will cover in our next post.

Drought tolerant perennials at Afton's:
(seasonal availability)
Agastache
Bee Balm – Monarda
Buddleia - Butterfly Bush
Burning Hearts Heliopsis
CatNip – Calamintha
Centranthus – Jupiters Berad
Chocolate Flower
Colorado Gazania
Coreopsis
Creeping Phlox
Creeping Thyme
Creeping Veronica
Dianthus
Echinacea
Engelmann's Daisy
Flax – Linum
Fleabane – Erigeron
Gaillardia - Blanket Flower
Gaura
Globe Thistle
Goldenrod – Solidago
Hens and Chicks
Hummingbird Trumpet – Zauschneria
Ice Plant
Lavender
Maximilian Sunflower
Mexican Hat
Missouri Evening Primrose
Nepeta - Catmint
Oriental Poppy
Penstemon
Pincushion Flower – Scabiosa
Pineleaf Penstemon
Pulsatilla - Pasque Flower
Rabbit Brush
Red Hot Pocker
Rudbeckia
Russian Sage
Salvia
Sea Holly – Eryngium
Sedums, both short and tall
Shasta Daisy
Snow-in-summer
Soapwort - Saponaria
Spring Carpet – Anacyclus
Woolly Thyme

💧 Water-Wise Garden Tray Sale – One Week Only! 💧Thinking about removing part of your lawn but not sure what to plant ins...
06/15/2026

💧 Water-Wise Garden Tray Sale – One Week Only! 💧

Thinking about removing part of your lawn but not sure what to plant instead?

Afton’s Garden Center has made it easy with our Water-Wise Planned Garden Trays. Each curated tray includes:

🌿 18 healthy 3.5” perennial plants
🌿 5–6 drought-tolerant varieties
🌿 A professionally planned layout
🌿 Enough plants to cover 60 sq. ft. or more

Regularly $99 — NOW ONLY $79.20 (20% OFF)

With water shortages affecting our area, there’s never been a better time to replace thirsty lawn space with a beautiful, low-water garden.

Located on the west end of Rogers Mesa
29428 Highway 92

06/15/2026

These planned gardens conserve water, update your landscape, lower utility bills, yard maintenance, and support local wildlife.

Water Wise GardeningNow is an excellent time to start using some water saving tricks in your garden. We are experiencing...
06/10/2026

Water Wise Gardening

Now is an excellent time to start using some water saving tricks in your garden. We are experiencing a serious drought in Western Colorado, and many of us are already on watering restrictions. We recommend using water saving practices for your lawn (or, better yet, let it go dormant this year), setting up a drip irrigation system for your beds, and mulching your plants.

If you are using sprinklers to water anything besides a lawn, or hand watering your garden, there's a lot you can do differently to save water and actually do a better job of getting water down to your plants' roots.

Sprinklers waste a crazy amount of water. Water gets delivered to areas that don't need it, lots of the water gets evaporated, and it's hard to get the water deep enough in the soil without running the sprinkler for hours.

Lawns are an exception to this. They pretty much need to be sprinkled. But, if you run your sprinklers at night, you will lose much less water to evaporation. Also, water deeper and less frequently. This will train your grass to grow deeper roots, making it more drought resistant. Mow your grass higher. Short grass lets a lot of sun through to warm up and dry out the soil.

Hand watering garden beds, shrubs, trees, and perennials wastes less water than sprinkling, but it still puts water where it is not needed and does not do a good job of getting the water down to the roots. Plus, it's very time consuming.

Sprinkling and hand watering both train plants to be shallow rooted, which means they are not at all drought tolerant, and need to be watered frequently.

Drip Irrigation
What do we recommend instead? Drip irrigating! Drip uses much less water, puts the water just in the root zone of your plants, and gets the water deeper in the soil. Your plants grow deeper roots and become more drought resistant. You don't have to water as often. Bonus: you'll have fewer w**ds!

Drip irrigation doesn't cost much, is easy to set up, and is endlessly adaptable. You can use drip tape on vegetable and flower rows/beds, and drip emitters, bubblers, or micro sprinklers for containers, shrubs and trees. Yes, it takes a little time to set up, but it saves you time all season long. Put it on a timer, and you won't even have to think about watering.

Mulch
Mulching has a lot of benefits for you and your garden. Mulch prevents evaporation and really keeps moisture in the soil. It reduces the soil temperature in our hot summers, which makes plants happy and less thirsty, and it suppresses w**ds. If you haven't been mulching, now would be a great time to start! You will not need to water as frequently, you will save water, and you'll do a lot less w**ding.

What mulch to use?
For vegetable and annual flower beds, we recommend something that is light and fluffy, and will break down into the soil by next year. Straw and leaves are excellent. Pile it 3" to 6" deep. Avoid hay and wood chips. Hay is generally full of w**d seeds. Wood chips seriously rob nitrogen from your soil and mess with the Ph. You can also use landscape fabric, and cut or burn holes wherever you want to place a plant.

For more permanent plantings, landscape fabric can't be beat. You can run your drip irrigation under it, and cover it with something attractive, like wood chips, dyed wood mulch, or rocks. It's a bit of work to set up, but lasts for many years.
If you skip the landscape fabric, you will have to pull a lot of w**ds. Some gardeners use deep mulch instead of landscape fabric. But some w**ds, like bindw**d and stolonaceous grasses, are barely even slowed down by organic mulches.

What water saving tricks have you used in your garden?

Rose SALEBUY TWO and GET ONE 1/2 off!Purchase any two roses and get the third at 50% off - while supplies lastOpen Sat-S...
06/07/2026

Rose SALE

BUY TWO and GET ONE 1/2 off!

Purchase any two roses and get the third at 50% off - while supplies last

Open Sat-Sun 10-5, M-F 9-6

Pruning Peppers Should you prune your pepper plants? The answer is maybe/probably/it depends...For any medium to large ...
06/06/2026

Pruning Peppers

Should you prune your pepper plants? The answer is maybe/probably/it depends...

For any medium to large fruited sweet, hot, chili, and bell peppers, there are two good reasons to prune:
1. The plant will grow stockier and will be less likely to flop over.
2. You will get more peppers per plant because the plant will grow more branches.
But, you will slow your plants down by about 2 weeks. And, some peppers, like jalapeños, habaneros, and other small fruited peppers, are naturally branching and not likely to flop.

How to prune peppers: When the plants have about 4 sets of true leaves, cut the main stem above the lowest 2 sets of leaves. Your plant will start branching from there, making more stems to grow fruits on and will grow stockier and stronger.

Not sure if you should prune? Maybe prune half of your plants so you can compare.

06/06/2026

Tomato Plant Pruning

To prune or not to prune?
That is the question of the day!

For tomatoes, whether or not to prune depends on if the variety is determinate or indeterminate, and on how you plan to support/train the plant.

Determinate tomatoes grow shorter and bushier than indeterminates, set and ripen a lot of fruit early, then stop setting fruits and concentrate on ripening already set fruits. They are generally earlier to produce than indeterminates, but produce less over a long season. These should not be pruned early in the season, as this will reduce your harvest. There are only 2 instances in which they should be pruned:

1. Your plant has gone bonkers and is setting too much fruit, which will result in smaller fruits and slow ripening. You can cut out some fruiting branches to get larger and earlier fruits.
2. In late summer, if the plant has lots of green fruits but is still blooming, you can cut off the blossoms so the plant uses its energy to ripen the existing fruits rather than trying to set more fruits that won't have time to ripen.

Indeterminate tomatoes are the ones that just keep growing until they are completely out of control (if not pruned). They produce just a few tomatoes at first, but keep producing more and more as the season progresses. Pruning indeterminates early and often is very beneficial for several reasons:
1. It keeps the plant from getting out of control and unmanageable.
2. It encourages larger fruits.
3. It encourages earlier ripening.
4. It reduces diseases by increasing air flow to the leaves.

Think of it this way: A plant, like you, only has so much energy in a day. You want your tomato plant to direct its energy towards growing larger, earlier ripening fruits rather than growing dozens of branches and setting way too much fruit. By pruning out suckers, you do this. Suckers are the new little branches that grow out of the leaf axils.

How do you know if your plant is determinate or indeterminate? Check the seed packet or nursery tag, or ask Google.

Should you prune off leaves? Think of leaves as the energy factories for the plant. Why would you want to reduce the plant's energy? So, no, unless they have yellowed. Their job is done when they turn yellow. It's also good to prune off any leaves that are touching the ground, as diseases can transfer from the soil to the leaves.

Should you prune off all suckers? For sure always prune any suckers at the base of the plant and in the first few branch axils up from the soil. This will greatly reduce disease and pest pressure. The rest depends on how you are going to train or cage your plants. That's going to be in our next post, so check back in a few days!

06/05/2026

Available today only!

Trap Crops: What are they, and why should you plant them?Trap crops are crops that attract bad bugs to them. They are pl...
06/03/2026

Trap Crops: What are they, and why should you plant them?

Trap crops are crops that attract bad bugs to them. They are planted for the purpose of keeping pests happy somewhere besides your valued plants. Once the bad guys are concentrated on a trap crop, you can spray just that crop, sparing your other crops. Or, pull and discard the trap crop in a sealed bag, trapping the bad bugs. Or, if you really hate the pest, burn them with fire! (Squash bugs?)

For aphids: nasturtium, calendula, milkw**d, mustard, and okra

Squash bugs prefer to dine on Blue Hubbard squash. Plant some on the perimeter of your garden to protect your other squashes and zucchini.

Cabbage worms and flea beetles prefer leafy brassicas, like radishes, mustard, and collard greens. Plant these around your cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower.

Thrips are drawn to basil and marigold.

Tomato hornworm: dill and lovage nearby

Colorado potato beetle: horseradish

Root Knot Nematodes: marigolds

Just be sure not to grow your trap crop too close to the crop you are protecting. You want to draw the pests AWAY from it.

We still have quite a few of these trap crops available at the nursery, including nasturtium, marigold, basil, and calendula.

Have you grown any trap crops? What worked or didn't work for you?

Introduction to Companion PlantingWhat is it, why do it, and is it hard to do?Companion planting is the act of planting ...
06/02/2026

Introduction to Companion Planting

What is it, why do it, and is it hard to do?

Companion planting is the act of planting different plants together in the same area, like onions and bush beans in a row together. Gardeners do this because some plants really benefit each other, and help each other to grow and be healthy. They do this by repelling pests, improving soil nutrients, and attracting pollinators. Other benefits include shading the soil and out competing w**ds.

Mono cropping, or growing just one type of plant in a bed or row, invites pests, depletes the particular nutrients that type of plant needs, and often leaves large areas of soil bare, which invites w**ds and causes higher soil temperatures in the heat of summer. These can be stressful to plants.

There are lots of different combinations of plants that you can try. Some of the best companion plants are:

1. Basil's scent confuses pests, like tomato hornworm, ants, mosquitoes, and whiteflies. Grow it with tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, and beets. When basil blooms it attracts pollinators.

2. Marigolds are excellent companions for tomatoes, potatoes, and squash. They repel root knot nematodes, tomato hornworm, white flies, and aphids, and attract pollinators.

3. Alliums, like onions and chives, deter many garden pests, like carrot fly and aphids, with their strong scent. Scatter them through out your veggie garden, except near beans. Beans don't like alliums.

4. Nasturtium benefits pretty much every veggie plant. It does 4 things: Acts as a trap crop for aphids, attracts pollinators, reduces cabbage worm damage, and shades the soil. Grow it all over your garden! It's beautiful and edible, too.

5. Dill's scent deters pests, especially cabbage loopers and cucumber beetles. So, grow it with your brassicas, squash, and cucumbers. When dill blooms, it attracts many beneficial insects to your garden.

6. Strongly scented herbs, like thyme, sage, oregano, and rosemary, repel pests. Grow them through out your garden. Blooming herbs attract pollinators and other beneficial insects.

There are many other plants and combinations of plants that you can try. There really are no hard and fast rules, except no onions with beans. You can use your imagination and have fun with it. Try growing flowers and herbs all throughout your veggie garden. It's beautiful and practical, is a terrific use of space, and will reduce your pest pressure and make your plants happier.

We still have a great selection of flowers, herbs, and vegetables at the nursery.

What combinations of plants have you tried?

Address

29428 Highway 92
Hotchkiss, CO
81419

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm
Sunday 10am - 5pm

Telephone

+19708724402

Website

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