Campo Compound

Located just outside of Denver in the uplands of Clear Creek is the half acre home studio and test garden of Studio Campo owners Cali Pfaff and Chad Saxton, and their young family. The homestead includes test plots for meadow conversion, lawn alternatives, gravel garden, and native multi-species flowering hedgerows. The back garden includes a fire pit, vegetable garden, miniature greenhouse, and fruit trellis. Future phases envision a swim and habitat pond, lumber & fabrication yard, and an espaliered orchard. The back garden centers on the Campo shop, housed in an outbuilding at the back of the property. A hammock chair hangs from the corner of a pergola, flanked by a pear and peach tree with grapes working their way up the hog panel trellis. The fie pit is surrounded by a no mow fescue and clover lawn with ornamental black dahlias and cosmos benefitting from the the overspray of the vegetable garden. A vegetable garden, with broccoli, corn, tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, lettuce, lima beans, and radishes, provides sustenance throughout the summer season. Fence was designed and fabricated by Chad from offcuts of pine from another install. Volunteer native sunflowers, Helianthus annus, grow alongside medicinal Feverfew, Tanacetum parthenium, in a quiet back corner. The front garden features an experimental gravel garden, with native and adaptive species, including Echinacea ‘White Swan’, Artemisia ludoviciana, Helianthus maximilliani, and Penstemon strictus. A flagstone path is reassembled from an old patio in the back yard. The gravel garden shifts in color palette across the seasons with ephemeral stars, such as Foeniculum vulgare 'Purpureum', Eriogonum umbellatum var. aureum 'Psdowns', and Eryngium planum ‘Blaukappe’.