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

[Tim Ingram]

Ian - its just struck me that you need several gardens in different parts of the country to grow all the plants you want to grow! The peat bed looks great, and just the thing when we cut down an old conifer hedge on the shady side of the garden to give a new planting area - what chance of growing petiolarid primulas and shortias(?); David Sampson used to grow these very well. I might be better off visiting Scotland!

[ichristie]

Hello Cliff, we would be delighted to see you here in Kirriemuir maybe best to think about it in spring when plants are growing hard frost just now. Tim yes it would be great to have several gardens but it would take all my spare time (do not have any) but you are also welcome to visit. Chris I doubt if I will get a rest at the SRGC D.W as I am building another garden at the Hotel which will be interestin hope you might be around will probably need some help,   cheers Ian.

[angie]

Hey Ian that looks great  , can't wait to see it. See you both at the weekend.

Angie 

[Leiomerus]

This is my new, small crevice garden, but nevertheless composed of a lot of stone. It is mainly a slope towards the south east, because I want the plants to profit from as much sunshine as possible. It is built next to my house, so it gets shade from noon till the sun gets up next morning. This is a very good place for Saxifrages and some little plants have already found a home in this crevice garden.

[ChrisB]

That looks wonderful.  Must figure out a way to do one of these myself....

[ichristie]

Hello, your new crevice looks very natural I look forward to seeing it again once the plants grow, cheers Ian the Christie kind

[Leiomerus]

Thanks for your apprecitation !

This crevice garden is made with different stones, which came from an old rock garden that I dismantled . Some stones are a bit flat, others are little rocks with various shapes and even cobblestones were used. I don't know if 'cobblestone' is the right word, I mean stones that were used to build roads.
I also took some rocks and a big hammer and I smashed the rocks into smaller pieces. These small pieces were used for topdressing. I wanted  the whole thing to look a bit like a scree.

I will surely post some pictures when the plants get bigger. I'm sure they love this spot, not only for being surrounded by rocks, but also because there is always a lot of wind here, next to the house, since I live in the country with a lot of open land.

[Leiomerus]

I have changed my new crevice garden a little bit. Now I have the disposal at some new stones, I replaced the rocks of which I thought they didn't fit, with better ones, so that the overall colour would be better.
The pictures taken, are of the rock garden in a wet condition, so you see very well the different colours of the stones.
I also added a new, lower construction next to the stairs. This I couldn't do the last time, because of some 'irrigation work' I had to do.

This slope is mainly planted with little plants of Saxifrages, the plants I love the most.

[Lesley Cox]

What a wonderfully natural home for saxifrages and the like. They will surely love the rocky places with tiny crevices and perfect drainage. And all this frim such a very young Forumist too.

I have thought of getting a truckload of mixed size scree-like material and simply dumping it, planting where the material falls. Wonder how that would work?

[Leiomerus]

Thanks Lesley.
I don't think your idea would really work, it would be a nice scree, but the plants would not survive. They don't need much, but still they do need a little bit of growing medium like a good draining soil. 

[Lesley Cox]

You are probably right Leiomurus. I seem to remember a few years back a Norwegian Forumist (can't remember his name and we haven't heard from him for some time) had done just that very successfully but he'd had the material tipped at the top of a slope and much of it fell down, in a natural way. When the plants were inserted I expect they rooted though the scree which wouldn't have been too thick, to the soil underneath. I'm sure Primula bella was growing and flowering nicely.

[Maggi Young]

Lesley, that was Geir Moen.... (gmoen)- who hasn't been round for a couple of months....  some pix here :
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=474.msg12054#msg12054
but I think the photos of the beginning part  of his remarkable scree was in the old forum, now lost.....

[Lesley Cox]

You're right as always Maggi and thanks for the link. It gives an excellent idea of what plants are suitable for such places. Geir is a really good grower though, which helps.

As a matter of fact I remembered his name at lunchtime as I stood in a supermarket queue though I can't imagine what brought it to mind. I said the name out loud and got some very old-fashioned looks from those in front of me. Used to that nowadays.

David, your nice Dianthus is very like one which appeared here in a batch of seedlings from D. a. 'Joan's Blood.' All were true except one which was taller and a little smaller in flower and I think must have been pollinated by the nearby D. deltoides 'Steriker.' It is proving to be a very good plant with the same dark reddish green foliage and flowers of a hot magenta, going on for ages but has set no seeds. I'm doing cuttings from it.

[Tim Ingram]

The great thing about plants is that they can tolerate a remarkable range of conditions. Some friends made a very crude scree using broken bricks and anything else available (sounds a bit like one of the constructions that Farrer railed against), but then filling in with sand and woodashes etc. A lot of plants have established in it, but not anything really choice. There is a great Volume of the AGS Bulletin (no. 2, 1933) almost totally devoted to screes with some pictures of the Botanics at Edinburgh and Branklyn in Perthshire, which both had amazing plants growing in them. Alan Furness' garden (simplistically) is almost like Lesley's description of piling a whole variety of different sized stones and rocks all together but done with great panache and skill - and can there be a better alpine garden in the UK? And then Robin and Sue White have simply planted in 4 or 5 inches of gravel over the soil (see an entry I have made on the AGS website). Alpine gardening is so much easier than people think, ha ha! Beyond that though it does become a real art form, which the crevice gardens can show, a little like the early days of the AGS when using rocks was as important as (or more than) the plants. Jiri's pictures of crevice gardens show that rather beautifully. (I should say I have a long way to go to emulate any of this!).

[astragalus]

Lesley, I don't think your idea is far off the mark at all.  I'd just add another step.  After you dump your mixed rock, throw shovels of mixed sharp sand and soil over everything and let the rains wash it down.  If you're in a really dry area you would have to use a hard spray from a hose to make rain.  You could do it in stages until you reached the consistency you want.  I think it could work well and it would certainly be simple.