Shakespeare Gardens
- Presented by: Colorado Shakespeare Festival
- Venue: Colorado Shakespeare Gardens
- CU Boulder Campus, Boulder, CO 80309
The Colorado Shakespeare Gardens (CSG) invites all who love Shakespeare’s work to extend their experience from the sight and sounds of the stage to the scent and sweet beauty of his gardens. For the 2024 season of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Shakespeare Gardens will be open, but some beds will be inaccessible due to the renovation of the Hellems buildings surrounding the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre, and food service will not be available.
Spend some time before taking your seat in the Roe Green Theatre (indoors) and visit the courtyard between Hellems and the Lucille Berkeley Buchanan Building to enjoy play-by-play plantings, a knot garden inspired by traditional Elizabethan designs, the moonlight Midsummer Night’s Dream garden, and more. The Kitchen Garden, largely inspired by The Merry Wives of Windsor, can be found this year at the north end of the courtyard in the Highlight Garden area next to the plum tree. A passionately committed team of volunteers cultivates and tends these gardens dedicated to the plants that Shakespeare knew and memorably referenced in his plays. For a virtual tour and more visit the Colorado Shakespeare Gardens website.
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Relish the fragrance of musk roses, carnations, rosemary, fennel and rue and banks of thyme, lavender and savory. Visit our sample of a traditional Elizabethan knot garden and be enchanted by our moonlight garden interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Encounter familiar carrots, lettuces, squash, turnips and radishes in the Kitchen Garden, punctuated with bay and apricot trees and twisted willow teepees for climbing peas and beans.
CSG members are available in the courtyard to answer questions each Saturday when a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays is scheduled in the Roe Green Theatre (Indoors), beginning approximately 90 minutes prior to curtain. Garden guide brochures are always available in the garden to aid your self-guided tours.
CSG enthusiastically welcomes new members, donors and sponsors. We devote ourselves to work in the gardens from March through October. In the winter months, we gather periodically to prepare for the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming season with presentations on the season’s Shakespeare plays and with plant research.
A few of our favorite quotations
“Our bodies are our gardens, to the which
our wills are gardeners; so that if we plant
Nettles, or sow Lettuce, set Hyssop, and weed
up Thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs….”
—Iago, Othello I, iii.
“There is Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you love remember. And there is Pansies, that’s for thoughts. There’s Fennel for you, and Columbines. There’s Rue for you, and here’s some for me….”
—Ophelia, Hamlet IV, v.
“That strain again! It had a dying fall:
O’ it came o’er my ear, like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of Violets,
Stealing and giving odour.”
—Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night I, i.
“Here flowers for you; Hot Lavender, Mints, Savory, Marjoram,
The Marigold that goes to bed wi’ th’ sun, …
The fairest flowers o’ th’ season
Are our Carnations, and streak’d Gillyvors,….”
—Perdita, Winter’s Tale IV, iv.
Plan your visit
Most CU Presents performances take place on the beautiful University of Colorado Boulder campus. Take some time to explore our venues, find out how to get here and get more tips on what to do while you’re in town.
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