Crevice Gardening ......in defence of rock.....

[Maggi Young]

That's a great new garden bed!  Terry  Hatch is part of the well-known "Hatch Clan" of New Zealand gardeners and nursery owners, Tim.
Fun to see him "doing his thing" in the UK as well! 

[Tim Ingram]

Yes the name rang bells and Andrea mentioned his nursery 'Joy Plants'. It was really nice to get such a quick response to the 'Comment' I wrote (and to know that 430 000 RHS members give or take a few might read it!).

[Maggi Young]

Quite so!  I noted from the  RHS  "Annual Review 2013/2014"     https://www.rhs.org.uk/about-the-rhs/pdfs/about-the-rhs/mission-and-strategy/past-annual-reports/rhs_annualreview_2014  that  RHS Membership  was 414,699 for 2013   and the 2013/14 income was £71.94m which is a mind boggling amount.

I wonder how many more members ( and dosh) they'd get if the publications such as The Garden and The Plantsman were for sale to non-members?

[astragalus]

Another nice astragalus in bloom plus the first color change for the flowers of Eriogonum umbellatum ssp porteri.  There aren't that many truly alpine eriogonums and this is a great one with many color changes as the flowers mature plus the leaves turn a deep burgundy when the weather gets cold again.
1.  Astragalus monspessulans
2.  Eriogonum umb. ssp porteri
3.  Centaurea pestalozzi

[Tim Ingram]

Much as I loved Andrea's picture of a crevice garden, this is the real thing . So lovely to see those plants growing outside Anne - I think the centaurea is one that Jon Evans showed in his pictures from the Wimborne AGS Show, with a comment that it was difficult. The answer: make a really good crevice garden! We've got the eriogonum growing in the sand bed but so far it is very small - would very much like to grow more of this genus.

[astragalus]

Tim, the eriogonum shown is pictured in its first color change from bright yellow.  It will keep changing until it turns a deep rusty red.  It's a true alpine and amenable to rock garden culture.  All in all, just a great plant.

[Maggi Young]

Ian is very fond of Eriogonums and has raised several from seed  but they have never performed well here - I think the climate is not good enough in summer to ripen them for flowering.

[astragalus]

Maggi, they really need dry air, which I don't have during the summer either.  But the one constant here is air movement - this tends to be a very breezy garden most of the time.  I think that helps getting away with humidity if the air is moving.

[astragalus]

Such a wonderful time.  Things keep popping into bloom and every day is exciting.  Moltkia petraea is starting and it has also self-sown into some crevices, lovely.
I've made a good start on the second tufa garden and now have to wait until August for the rest of the rock to come so that I can finish it.  It's partly planted where there will be no future disturbance when I'm back to constructing.  It's terrible when you outrun your supply lines.  First, a whole day was spent cutting tufa and laying it out, so the building was really easy and thus speedy.

[arilnut]

Here is the crevice bed I have been working on since last fall.

[astragalus]

A nice accidental combination in the upper crevice bed.  The moltkia seeded itself there.  Plants think of things gardeners miss.

1,  Moltkia petraea and Centaurea biokevensis

[Tim Ingram]

Really lovely Anne! Ian Christie remarked elsewhere about Ian Y's short piece on the Beechgrove Gardening programme being (an all too short) breath of fresh air for those of us who love growing alpines. I would dearly love to see a programme on your's and some of the other N. American rock gardens and nurseries. It would be like gardening programmes eventually discovering the fresh air of the mountains: 'The Land above the Trees'! (Maybe I am waxing too poetic?

[ranunculus]

That would make for stunning television, Tim … I could recommend at least twelve more beautiful gardens and I'm sure that Panayoti and Mike Kintgen could add a further fifty or more (both private and public) - all crying out for recognition, exposure and commendation.  With the right presenter, an in-depth analysis of the history, location, design and, most importantly, the plants of the chosen gardens this could make for ground-breaking television.  There are so many wonderful gardens (not necessarily 'alpine' in every case) in the States and Canada that this could run and run.

[johnralphcarpenter]

My wife has been busy cleaning up and rearranging an old rock garden. Now for some grit sand and some plants.

[David Nicholson]

A good start Ralph, I'll be interested to watch the progress.