Denmark's giant crevice garden... how it was made....

[art600]

Just the thread for a grey winter afternoon.

I too wait to see the plants thriving in this magical landscape,

Many thanks ZZ and Maggi

[Katherine J]

A reminder that in 2003, in the Rock Garden, Number 110, (pages 70 to 84)  there is an article from ZZ, entitled "In defense of rock" where Zdenek writes about crevice gardens.
 This is an article drawn from his very successful presentation to the Alpines 2001 Conference in Edinburgh.

It is an excellent article, I've read it a few times already (thanking to the SRGC for sending me the CD with the older issues of The Rock Garden  !

I'm so sad that albeit so close to Czechia, I've never met these great rockers and seen their wonderful gardens. I have a lot to make up for... ( is this the right expression for to recover a missed thing??)

[Maggi Young]

With ZZ's permission, I will make a new thread about Crevice Gardening, showing in several pdf files, the article which I mantioned three posts back, with some new photos and comments from ZZ......  

see here:

http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=4656.0

[Stone Rider]

I have news from Denmark today
Brave Vikings open the fight with tufa today to finish the TUFALAND
before x mass. Under rocks are sheets filled with water retentive
material for soaking the stone during summer time.

[Stone Rider]

This Danish thread  continues towards end of
the year.


Here are fresh two pictures from the theatre of the Tufaland.
Here is seen the calming pleasant effect of general parallel pattern with
relatively different stones. I think that this small team of Danes
deserves degree of masters.

[Stone Rider]

Still the Danes are working:
after another hard day, three Vikings Johannes, Maria and Herluf
placed good amount of tufa and grit. Only 8 tufa blocks are waiting to
be arranged together with mixtures of sand, limestone grit and tufa
grit. Excellent executing I must say to myself.

[Katherine J]

Will it be planted in spring?

[Stone Rider]

Will it be planted in spring?

The planting will take a few years I pressume. I go there with Joyce to help them for half of May. Send them some Colchicum hungaricum as a gift...   ZZ

[Stone Rider]

Here are three perfect photos showing slow finishing of one bold tufa ridge.
Denmark is under snow, but Northern Jutland is still saved.

 Good night
 ZZ

[Stone Rider]

I can publish some nice New Year photos from Denmark, showing that a rock garden look under cover (showing only round shapes and part of naked flesh of its body) is romantic like a beautiful woman. Happy New year 2010 to you

[Maggi Young]

After  Kai Andersen's presentation to the Epping Forest AGS group's "Kath Dryden Day"  yesterday,  I thought it would be nice to copy the words here from Tim Ingram  on Facebook about the event - with this link to a video from Bangsbo


Tim wrote :
Kaj Andersen showed this video at the end of his talk to the Epping Forest Alpine Garden Society special meeting, in honour of Kath Dryden VMH, today. You must be very proud of this Crevice Garden - it really is beautifully made! Wonderful and friendly meeting with grateful thanks to the Epping Forest Group and especially Kit Strange. A few more pictures and description to come but a plante fest from four of the very finest plantsmen... and a memory of a very great lady in the world of alpines.

Panayoti Kelaidis  commented of the video : Photography is worthy of the garden! Wow!


Tim Ingram:
 What is especially remarkable, Panayoti, is that the garden is virtually totally the result of voluntary input and Kaj Andersen said it was open to all 24hrs a day - there was no vandalism or removal of plants (which seems to be a sad feature at times of public gardens here from Wisley to Kew to Edinburgh). 'When something is beautiful no-one wants to destroy it' - a simple but rather profound definition of much that lies behind a garden like this. Every year in June there is the Bangsbo Flower Festival which attracts 15-20000 people, and Kaj's talk has certainly made us want to visit the garden (and it lies just across the water from Göteborg, and not so far away, Peter Korn's Trädgård. There is that close link to the culture of rock gardening especially in Czechia of course, but also that strong scientific tradition of botanical discovery in Scandinavia that dates back to Linnaeus and before. All of these things are in strange contrast to our present political situation here in the UK, which we feel particularly after a debate our local MP organised nearby on that foolish word 'Brexit' that seems to ignore our common environment and understanding of the wider world. I am naive of course (not scientifically) but this meeting that Kit organised is how I see the world - a place that we explore and discover and share our knowledge of. Certainly the legacy of Kath Dryden and something the Alpine Garden Society could express (with the help of the Royal Horticultural Society) rather better to a new generation of gardeners than it does at the moment. There was no mention of the Epping Forest Group meeting that I could see clearly on opening the AGS web-page, and though it is clearly a very specialised way of gardening it is the Local Groups that drive this as much as the 'higher' horticultural establishment.

-From one of your 'blogs' at Denver: http://www.botanicgardens.org/blog/hortus-paradisi .....
"......And haply then
That future country lost its gloom;
More lovely in that world than this,
Immaculate the white lily grows,
And perfected we walk in bliss."

Hortus Paradisi, William Bell Scott

[Maggi Young]

Wonderful to see one of SRGC's favourite Vikings being honoured  for his support of the  Bangsbo Botanic Garden in Frederikshaven in Denmark.  - congratulations, Kaj Andersen​!  Photo by   Jiří Papoušek​