I have enjoyed reading the replies to my initial question. Thank you very much.
Dad (Frank) would have been interested too. Back in the 1960s, although he grew very few if any alpines, he did attend the AGS meetings in Birmingham. In fact, we did have a tufa garden, which came from Roy Elliott, the long standing editor of the AGS journal. He built his famous tufa wall and he had some left over which he gave to Dad.
Funnily enough, I have only just started using my homemade hypertufa in pans, cut up into pieces the size of the palm of one's hand, and planted such that they are just visible on the surface when I pot up plants or seedlings. Once the pan is watered the tufa locks with the compost and it is forced up slightly over time by pressure from the heavier surrounding compost. I will illustrate this in another note sometime. The plants and seedlings all appear to benefit significantly.
Although we had few alpines in the 1960s, we did have a nice collection of auriculas. Dad attended the society shows and did some exhibiting. I estimate that half our Christmas cards came from members. The names I recall were Dr Duncan Duthie, Richard Loake, Hal Cohen, Arthur Bridgewater and the Rev Oscar Moreton.
Dad would have been 100 this year.
JOHN
