Advice required for alpine plants

[Neil]

I am in the processes of building a raised bed, see attached photo the bit at the end of the garage is going to be a lean to greenhouse.  There is approx 14 m2 of planting area to be filled, it is 1m wide the wall along the back is 7m and the two side are 3m on the inside   I am looking for Alpine plants that do not need lots of mollycoddling that will give interest all year round, are there any plants that flower in the Autumn/Winter that can be put in there.  The fence at the back is nearly due south.  In the winter it will not get much direct sun due to neighbours and the garage.  In the summer it will got sun at some point of the day except a 0.5m strip were the fence is.

Regarding the soil in the bed, it is sandy and fairly free draining,  ph varies from 6.6 to 7.5. 

Your help will be much appreciated.

[Darren]

Neil,

My first choice would be the silver saxifrages, which look great even out of flower. Then an assortment of the kabschia saxifrages which will give you flowers from late winter right through spring. Those of himalayan parentage/origin might like the 0.5 metre strip which gets no direct sun, but many of the others will take full sun for much of the day. The shader of well positioned rock at midday would be welcomed though.

Phlox subulata and its cultivars would do well - just give them a haircut after flowering.

Veronica offers a few lovely choices - try V.armena or oltensis

Some Androsaces are happy to be left to their own devices - lanuginosa for example , but you might want to look for the compact form.

There are numerous Dianthus which would flower a bit later.

Oxalis adenophylla or enneaphylla are good and reliable. Dryas octopetala 'minor' is well behaved and very attractive (the bigger typical form is a bit of a hooligan here).

Perhaps a small daphne or two for scent - "Blackthorn Rose" is small and does well in a crevice here without fuss. D. retusa (not tangutica) is a bit bigger and is easy.

Autumn/winter flowers are more difficult unless you look at bulbs. Crocus would give you flowers throughout this period if chosen carefully. Perhaps reticulate Iris and assorted Scilla also? Cyclamen coum is a must for winter flowers, hederifolium for autumn but people recommend you keep the separate or the hederifolium swamps the coum (I have not found this personally - yet).

Later summer (july onwards) is perhaps the most difficult time for flowers but these do well with me:

Origanum 'Kent Beauty', Silene schafta, Pelargonium endlicherianum. Some alliums can be useful in later summer - A wallichii for instance. Polygonum vaccinifolium is very nice in autumn.

In addition to the Daphne some small shrubs would be good for adding height and structure. Some ideas would be: Salix x boydii, Berberis corallina 'compacta'.

[Maggi Young]

I was just drawing breath to make my suggestions but Darren has scored a virtual bull's-eye on my ideas..... here are some more....

Edraianthus certainly for May show; Globularia, May through to July.
Hypericum repens... delightful tiny mats which will drop over edges and the flowers are large in comparison to the plant, and have red and yellow 'barber's pole' stripes on the outside.Foliage is lovely early inthe year and the summer flowering continues well into the frosts.



I'll return later if I think of anything else.

[Darren]

That Hypericum sounds lovely Maggi, I must look it up. I like plants which hug the contours of rocks.

Glad you mentioned a member of the Campanula family too - a family noticeably lacking in my list but has a lot going for it. I don't grow many myself so can't really advise. Campanula itself is a genus with a lot of , albeit attractive, thugs - so choose carefully. As a general rule with Campanula: if it is found in the 'alpines' section of your garden centre it will be a yard across two weeks after planting and will have already swallowed the smaller members of your family 

[Maggi Young]

 :-[Found these pix of the hypericum in the "old" forum ( in this thread...
http://www.srgc.org.uk/discus/messages/283/16226.html
which has all sorts of nice things, like Geir Moen flowering a rosulate viola outside in Norway.... stuff like that! Par for the Forum course, really, I suppose! )
 
Edit :sadly the "old Forum" is no longer available.

Hypercium reptans.. showing it growing at the corner of one of our raised beds made from paving slabs.

[Darren]

That is rather nice Maggi - thanks for hunting out the pictures. I looked at the old forum thread and had forgotten how much good stuff appeared on there. Gerd's pink Cremanthodium 

[Neil]

Daren, Maggi thank you for your suggestions.  Just trying at the moment to find building hardcore. Only need 3m3!

[Tim Ingram]

Do you dare put in a couple of dwarf conifers?! Pinus leucodermis 'Schmidtii' is superb and Chamaecyparis pisifera 'Nana' even smaller. Another plant making a fine show for me at the moment is Anthemis marschalliana. I agree with Maggi about the Hypericum; there are some lovely small species and they seem to be the Cinderellas of the alpine world - one a friend grows is H. athoum which has unusual rounded leaves and tidy habit.

[Neil]

Tim, thank you I have already have some miniature conifers in mind, but that pinus looks good.

[Lesley Cox]

And lewisias. They don't take much room, have super colour, especially the cotyledon hybrids or forms and the rosettes are attractive when they're not in bloom. And various Saponarias, always under-rated for some reason but great colour and form, in the compact species.

[Neil]

Well its taken four years to get this stage the bed is complete, now all I need to do is get the plants in, have just sown all the seed I got from last years SRGC and NARGS seed exchange and the , all 270 of them just waiting for this years exchanges    The total area is 14m². 

[Yann]

Nice job, once plants will be established you'll have a nice view from the house.
Thinking of building a similar bed in an angle.

[Neil]

Access to all of it is quite easy, except the right hand side by the greenhouse, but I have some step on stool that allows me to reach the back.  Having it as a raised bed means it is much easier to work with except when it came to lifting some of the rocks one of them was about 150kg and needed a lot of effort to get it in place.  The gravel topping is 6mm and 50mm deep that has stop all the weeds.

And now the garden is cat proof, I have no problem with them.  The fence has prikka strips all the way round and the other entrance to the garden is protected by Catwatch which the cat very quickly gave a wide berth to

Once this is completed the aim is too put another bed in the middle of the gravel area. 

[Gabriela]

If I can add to all great suggestions, a few primulas and least one Soldanella; one cannot have an alpine bed without a Soldanella