After serving the people of Colorado for 22 years in various capacities from Extension Director in Gilpin County, Horticulture Specialist in El Paso County, to leadership roles in the Native Plant Master Program and the Colorado Native Plant Society, Dr. Irene Shonle is retiring. She leaves behind an inspiring legacy for gardeners and plant lovers in Colorado. Here are a few highlights from an interview with her.

How did you get started in horticulture?

In my late teenage years, I knew plants were the future, so I decided to go into academia, but soon realized that it wasn’t the path for me, even with a PhD. It became clear that Extension was my career path. With an unending number of things to learn and a much more collegial climate, it was a good fit.

I started in Gilpin County as the first Extension Director, Horticulture Agent, and Natural Resources Agent. I was a one-person show for 17 years. Natural Resources was a primary focus, which involved forest fire and mountain pine beetle mitigation. Horticulture is my personal passion. I built up the Master Gardener program, taught classes and created many fact sheets on mountain gardening at 9,000 feet. During my first year, I followed my interest in native plants and teamed up with Barbara Fahey on the Native Plant Master Program. We worked together to revive it, starting with Jefferson and Gilpin Counties, and then expanded the program to other counties. I wrote several fact sheets and taught classes, but all credit goes to Barbara for creating the program. She was in charge; I just provided a little energy boost. It meant a lot to have built these programs from scratch.

When did you start in Gilpin County? How long have you been in El Paso County?

I started in Gilpin County in 2002 and went to El Paso County in 2019. They are completely different. Gilpin county is at an elevation of 9,000 ft and had 6,000 people. El Paso County has 750,000 people and a totally different growing climate. I moved from a Director to Horticulture Agent/Specialist. I enjoyed juggling many different balls in Gilpin, but I could focus more on horticulture in El Paso.

What projects are you most proud of or passionate about?

Working with native plants is what I’m most passionate about. Everything from the Native Plant Master Program, being a major player in the Landscaping with Colorado Native Plants Conference and collaborating on the upcoming 10^th Anniversary Conference. This is my last conference on the planning committee. It has been a great program where I taught so much about native plants around the state. Also, we just installed a beautiful and huge native plant demonstration garden outside the El Paso Extension Office. It’s pretty cool at 35 by 70 feet, containing different rooms including a turf section, a pollinator garden, a very low water garden, a firewise garden, and a low water and low maintenance shrub garden. Drip irrigation established the plants during the first year, but our goal is to have very little irrigation in the future.

I’m very proud of my work in managing the mountain pine beetle outbreak in Gilpin County and along the northern Front Range from 2008 to 2011. Fortunately in 2011, a really big cold snap killed the beetle. It had been relatively warm, so the pine beetles had not built up their antifreeze when the cold snap hit. After two days of -30°, they were stopped in their tracks. There was so much concern because the mountain pine beetle was on the Western Slope and spread to the Front Range. For perspective, Gilpin County had 6,000 people; in one year, we answered 6,000 questions on pine beetles. I was a lead on an inter-agency response team called the Northern Front Range Mountain Pine Beetle Working Group, which included State Forest Service, Federal Forest, County people, and almost everyone else who was impacted by the pine beetle. We put out publications and conducted workshops and events for elected officials. It was a massive effort, and it felt good to deal with something that was such a huge threat to our forests. Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end. We currently see a lot of pine beetles in the Black Forest in El Paso County. It would be great to have another cold snap like the one in Gilpin County.

What part of the Native Plant Master Program did you like most?

It’s such a fun way to geek out, to be out in the field, to teach people who love the program, to see all the plants. It keeps your brain sharp remembering all the different things. It is great being around other geeks who think it’s fun, too. Geeks are my favorite people.

As you move into retirement, what would you like to share with the public?

As we see climate change and the population increase, there will be less water available for everyone. Planting native plants, especially drought-tolerant ones, is going to help your garden, lower water bills, and help you adapt to climate change more readily. Native plants provide a safe haven for pollinators and birds. If I could convince everybody in Colorado of one thing, it would be to convert your landscape to native plants. It would really help all the pollinators and prepare us for the water crises we face.

I’ve noticed my neighbors are converting their lawns; it’s kind of contagious. People see a nicely landscaped yard with native plants and they want to do that too. However, I would caution homeowners to avoid turning their yards into all rock. Rock covered yards are no better than water guzzling lawns. They are sterile, they contribute to the urban heat island, and they don’t provide anything for pollinators. To show the public an alternative, we installed the demonstration garden at the El Paso County Extension Office. One of the great things about a native plant garden is that it still looks good in the winter; it has eye-catching structure.

I also want to encourage people’s curiosity and interest in thinking outside the box. At big box stores and some garden centers, there are many European plants: the same old, same old. As the public becomes more interested in water conservation and native plants, stores will provide more suitable plants to broaden the plant palette. I hope that people who enter the green industry will start native plant nurseries, especially local ones, because the climate differs throughout our state. I would love to see more people become interested in native plants and have garden centers propagate more of these plants. It’s a chicken and egg problem; you need customers to buy native plants and you also need nurseries to grow and sell them. It’s also challenging when you have a colorful pansy that looks good next to a native plant that doesn’t look good now but will be super cool in a year or two, but it might be more expensive.

We want to get more visibility with demonstration gardens, the Native Plants Conference, and the residential grants program so the public can create their own native plant gardens. My front yard is all native plants with certification from the Colorado Native Plant Society and a gold certification sign. I’ve done tours for local garden clubs; the more visibility that we have the better.

When we selected plants for the demonstration garden in El Paso County, we chose plants that people could find and replicate in their own yards. The Horticulture Art Society in Colorado Springs helped quite a bit; they sourced amazing native plants for their annual plant sale and allowed me to order a small number in advance.

What is your plan for retirement?

I’m going to do a lot of traveling and camping. I’ll still be a Native Plant Master instructor in Cañon City, just not behind the scenes anymore. I am a cancer survivor, so I will lead nature hikes with a group called Live by Living. It connects cancer survivors with each other and nature. I participated in their Cancer to 14K Program and hiked two fourteeners in 2024. Next year I’m going to help lead the program. My goal is to do fourteen fourteeners!