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

[Ewelina Wajgert]

Maggi, let me go to bed!!!

Beacuse of you I ovesleep tomorrow for work 

[Luc Gilgemyn]

I am sure you slept very well after looking at all these beauties Ewelina ! 

What a tremendous thread, full of first hand top information about building this project !!  It certainly deserves a 5 stars mention !! The selection of plants is just as stunning ! As expressed before, I hope we will have the opportunity to see how everything develops !
Thanks to ZZ and MM (Magic Mum  ) for showing us !

This will definitely go on my "places to visit" list !

[Stone Rider]

The Czechs have flair for growing the rock garden plants. They are ship-shape.
In Czech Republic there are a lot of beautiful and exceptional gardens.

We are losing some of them. Two days ago died (at his 77) hero Jaromir Grulich, who constructed with help of kind Nature the biggest private rock garden (of the world?) near your Polish boundary.

[Stone Rider]

Dear Maggie and your crowd of disciples. My first sentences appeared with a little bit of blooming luck at this holy land of opinionated rock gardeners, so I can make my first careful steps forward to my aim. This nice project of tiny unknown Bangsbo Botanical Garden was well documentated by project leading Viking, local teacher Herluf Johanson. Practically all the photos are his (I let my camera home because of the experiences that bad luck is surely coming if you wish to photograph your triuph or something similar. Limestone slabs were shining in lucky sunny weather and fooled camera. The result are very burned whites. Photographs taking in summer when I was in Bulgaria are more natural because of cloudy days. I took two exercises (like a true superman) six weeks before this action: I placed 20 tons of irregular rocks around huge new alpine house of Fritz Kummert without machinery at steep hill and one outcrops from perfect parallel porphyr rock (20 tons plus grit) for a horticultural university in Benburg, Germany. From Benburg I traveled with my perfect partner Joyce Carruthers to the most northern top of Jutland peninsula to Frederikshaven where is Bangsbo museum and botanic garden.

Some mistakes are here in names. Herluf Johansen from Frederikshavn has e-mail bbhf@bbnpost.dk and German town is Bernburg.

[Ragged Robin]

Wow, wow,wow....this project is so exciting and you can palpably feel the spirit that permeates through such a wonderful team so full of enthusiasm for their creation and the icing on the rock garden cake - the plants!  thanks so much for bringing the progress through your exceptional journal ZZ and to Maggi who certainly does have the magic touch in everything she does; including her rock garden (seen in the publicity about SRGC) can we see more Maggi?

Will have to make another posting about the special plants in the photos as there are some wonderful ones I have never heard of before and the waterfall effect of is magnificent  

[Maggi Young]

The Czechs have flair for growing the rock garden plants. They are ship-shape.
In Czech Republic there are a lot of beautiful and exceptional gardens.

We are losing some of them. Two days ago died (at his 77) hero Jaromir Grulich, who constructed with help of kind Nature the biggest private rock garden (of the world?) near your Polish boundary.

We are very sad to hear of the death of Jaromir Grulich.... we have had the pleasure to be shown photos of his garden in the Forum, and know of his great skills as a gardener.
ZZ, will you please pass the condolences of the SRGC gardeners and the Forumists to the Family of Jaromir Grulich?

[mark smyth]

Oh no! He was such a lovely man. He tended his rock face every day including carrying watering can of water up to water his plants.

He used to garden in the area in front of the house. He changed the course of a stream so it flowed around the garden. To the right of his house was a forest on the side of a hill. One year a huge wind blew down the forest revealing the stone. He asked forest men if he can hav some for a rockery and they said you can have all or nothing. I have been to his garden three times and have always been blown away by it. His plant collection is unbelievable. Over winter he carved flowers in to wood and sold these to visitors in the spring.

[Ewelina Wajgert]

We are losing some of them. Two days ago died (at his 77) hero Jaromir Grulich, who constructed with help of kind Nature the biggest private rock garden (of the world?) near your Polish boundary.

I'm very sad of this news. I knew Jaromir and was in his garden some years ago.

You are wrotten "We are losing some of them". Who is yet missing?

[Lesley Cox]

It seems this Danish crevice garden takes rock gardeneing to a whole new level. Some of the pictures show what appears to be a major archeological dig and I wouldn't be surprised in centuries to come if this whole garden is considered to be a national treasure showing how 21st century gardeners plied their craft. It is all so severe and strong that somehow the plants almost look redundant but will certainly soften things up very soon, as they grow.

[Maggi Young]

I am grateful to ZZ for this photo of the late Jaromir Grulich in his  garden.

Zdeněk recalls how "Grulich planted successfuly the fissures in the natural rock
with Lewisia cotylenon and Gentiana sino-ornata and so on."

[Lesley Cox]

What a super photograph that is, of a dedicated gardener in his element. While man-made gardens can be superb - aren't always - the natural rock of the landscape beats everything else as a place for alpine plants. I've frequently wished for a quarter acre of natural rock when I've travelled in our own high country areas and have thought they would make a perfect rock garden for flowering plants instead of the grasses and weedy things that are usually there.

[Diane Clement]

A memory of that incredible garden, from the Czech 2007 conference

[Luc Gilgemyn]

I never had the chance to meet the man and visit his garden, but judging from the pix I can only say.
What a loss ! 
But at the same time, what a happy and full gardener's life the good man must have had !  Taking advantage of the excellent conditions (for growing Alpines !) that nature offered him, must have been very rewarding.
He surely made the best of it.
Would there be any chance that his work is preserved somehow ?

[Ragged Robin]

What a super photograph that is, of a dedicated gardener in his element

Lesley has put it so well and it is Jaromir Grulich's expression that makes one feel he was so at home in his natural rock garden.  A wonderful photographic moment in time.

[Maggi Young]

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.