Boettcher Mansion Gardens Re-emerge with the Spring

The Boettcher Mansion as seen from the Mule Deer garden.

By Victoria Gits, PLAN Jeffco Staff Writer and Board Secretary

Three years ago, the lovely, historic Boettcher Mansion on Lookout Mountain was surrounded by a mostly neglected landscape of overgrown grasses and weeds not really in keeping with the grand Arts and Crafts home known as a popular wedding venue.

Thanks to volunteer gardeners, today the grounds on three sides of the house are full of thriving annuals, perennials, shade-or-sun loving plants, flowering shrubs and vines. Even in mid-September one can peruse the zinnias, sunflowers, impatiens, daisies and mums – and petunias, calibrachoa, and sweet potato vine – lots and lots of them.

Instead of forgettable space, the outdoors is now a horticultural showcase and a destination worthy of taking visitors for a peaceful walk any time of day for free, with or without a wedding to attend.

Clematis peeking out through the screens surrounding the Bobcat garden.

“The transformation has been remarkable,” said Megan Kreutzer, Interim Lookout Mountain Venues Supervisor and the former Boettcher Mansion Supervisor for four years. She has worked at the mansion for 20 years. “What was once a weedy, overgrown entrance has blossomed into a vibrant and welcoming garden, a colorful backdrop for our many weddings and a beautiful first impression for the visitors we host each year,” Kreutzer said.

The Boettcher Mansion Gardeners team was nominated as a candidate for the 2026 Rocky Mountain Juniper Award by the staff of Jefferson County Parks & Open Space.  The awards are presented annually in January at the Conservation Awards ceremony at the Cultural Center in Lakewood.

The Boettcher Mansion on Lookout Mountain (originally known as Lorraine Lodge) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. It was added for its significant Arts and Crafts style architecture and its history as the summer home of Charles Boettcher, following its donation to Jefferson County.

Charline Breeden, granddaughter of Charles Boettcher, donated the 62-acre property to Jefferson County on her death in 1972. The 10,000-square-foot Boettcher Mansion on Lookout Mountain is part of Jefferson County Parks & Open Space.

When the mansion was built, it was initially known as the Lorraine Lodge. In 1975, it opened to the public as the Jefferson County Conference and Nature Center, and in 1989 was renamed the Boettcher Mansion.

It was built as a summer home and hunting lodge by Breeden’s grandfather, a pioneering entrepreneur who made his fortune in hardware, sugar beets and cement. Charles Boettcher became part owner of the Brown Palace Hotel in 1922. By 1931 Boettcher and his son Claude had bought out the other partners, assuming full ownership of the hotel.

The Boettcher Mansion sign greets visitors as they approach what was once the “back yard” of the mansion.

Charles Boettcher was a serial entrepreneur. After arriving in the States in 1879, he and his brother opened a chain of hardware stores. Charles opened a store in Leadville, where he made a small fortune selling hardware, making loans to the silver miners, and acquiring substantial mining acreage. Following a 6-month “retirement” he went on to launch Ideal Cement and the Great Western Sugar Company, after which he became President of the Denver and Salt Lake Railroad.

Historical Note: Charles Boettcher died in his apartments at the Brown Palace on July 2^nd, 1948. He was 95 years old.

A mix of Tudor and Arts-and-Crafts style architecture, the summer home built in 1917 is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A self-guided history tour is available at the front desk.

The Broad-tailed Hummingbird garden runs alongside the ramp that leads to what is now the front door of the Boettcher Mansion.

Volunteer work force infusion

Credit for the current botanical enhancements goes largely to a volunteer staff of nine as of 2025, a number which has grown over the years, starting from zero in January of 2023.

Before 2023 the full-time staff had to squeeze in gardening duties while managing all the other chores of booking, cleaning and maintaining a huge old home for the benefit of the public and as an event center. The professional landscaping company had been let go a year earlier due to the cost of labor and materials.

Desperately in need, the mansion managers turned to Jefferson County Open Space’s Volunteer program and the annual Volunteer Fair, which is held in late winter.

Michelle Poolet, Operational Director of PLAN Jeffco, attended the Volunteer Fair, heard about the gardens and signed up. With the start of the growing season, there were only three volunteer gardeners to start the transformation of the gardens. They were joined by a fourth in mid-summer.

There is a large, vintage, established garden on the north side of the mansion that originally was irrigated. But the irrigation system didn’t work in 2023, so the volunteers had to water by hand, which was a two-hour-long process.

Surrounding the veranda on the south side of the Boettcher Mansion are these stone planters, now filled with Dragon’s Blood sedum and masses of petunias, zinnias and sweet potato vine.

Floral and foliage explosion

In the early days, the design was simple. “We just want it to look pretty,” a supervisor said, according to Poolet. Plants were purchased mainly at local garden centers; the volunteers mostly focused on annuals because they have the most colorful blooms all summer.

But like gardeners tend to do, the volunteers kept expanding and experimenting until there are now 19 gardens, up from the original eleven, and every little vacant space is occupied by another collection, not to mention all the hanging baskets and planter boxes.

The centerpiece is the Mule Deer garden at the north-entrance side, with its ornamental rocks and dozens of plants of all kinds. More recent additions include the Abert Squirrel shade garden enhanced with locally sourced rocks, which were foraged and transported by the Open Space trails crew, which also turned the soil.

The west end of the Fawn Garden. It stretches for 65 feet along the stone wall on the south side of the Mansion, filled with North American native perennials such as tickseed (coreopsis), shasta daisies (leucanthemum), multi-colored yarrow, mountain fleabane, milkweed (asclepias), purple coneflower (Echinacea), bee balm (Monarda), black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), blanket flower (Gaillardia), and little bluestem grasses.

On the south side, there is a Fawn garden with mass plantings of North American native plants.  One garden is dedicated to irises – that’s the Elk garden.  Many plants are identified with scientific and common names.

The house and garden are scenically framed in a grove of beautiful Ponderosa pine trees on top of a mountain, with the Continental Divide on one side and the city on the other.  There is a large parking lot, a Nature Center and easy hiking trails.

The design of the gardens has evolved to what Poolet describes as an Arts and Crafts model, and there is a new irrigation system that can be operated with the click of an app.

Based on her research, the model Arts and Crafts garden is based on native plants and making use of the materials one can find on hand and in nature.

“The supervisors control the budget. We come up with the ideas. Then we talk about it and make changes,” Poolet said. These days it’s more about perennials than annuals and the shopping is largely done at a wholesale nursery in Englewood.

Michelle Poolet standing beneath a portion of the patio garden, which is filled with zinnias, petunias and Dragon’s Blood sedum.

More than a mansion

At last count there were 19 named gardens on the list, but Poolet is not deterred. She has her eye on a “grassy, weedy spot” on the south side of the veranda. Maybe some roses that thrive at high altitude and bloom repeatedly in a season, she thinks.

Kreutzer regards the gardens not only as a decorative attraction but also as an educational resource. They have added another dimension to the Boettcher Mansion experience.

“We now see visitors spend just as much time outdoors admiring the beauty as they spend indoors.  Many of our wedding’s cocktail hours take place in the garden, and it’s now a place that wedding guests can enjoy,” she said.

Postscript:

According to the Boettcher Mansion Volunteer Coordinator, Ronnie Terry, there’s always room for more volunteer gardeners, especially this year, given the damage to two of the established gardens caused by the heavy March winds and wildfire mitigation efforts. If you’re interested in finding out more about this program, you can contact Ronnie Terry directly at rt****@*************co.us