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

[astragalus]

David, I would assume that's correct. I've never known of any cement that didn't leach lime eventually. I think the real boon is that it's easily available from old sidewalks being torn up, old foundations. Just a brilliant way of repurposing. They have at least 40 meters more of bank to be turned into crevice gardens.

[Maggi Young]

Pic from ZZ- of Martin Brejnik's garden, where silver cushions of Ptilotrichum spinosum have been planted for  all season effect.

[Leucogenes]

I like this form of a Crevice Garden  especially well. It is a successful combination of natural scenery and Crevice Garden. Not very architecturally and strictly formally. With heights and depths. Fantastically. A great work.

Thanks for this inspiration... Maggi. I have to do my arrangement next year anew formed. I will try to move some of it.

[Pavel]

This is my garden. Very stony and natural as I like it.

[Harald-Alex.]

My new Alpine Garden with dolomite stones.
Last year in july I buildt my little alpine garden with dolomite stones, got from Allgäu.
For this I needed big technic and needed some time to find the right places for the stones.
The spaces between the stones I filled with selfmade special soil mixes for the alpine plants.
After planting I covered the soil with dolomite gravels.
The plants grow well and flowers this year good.
Next spring there grow more geophytes too.

[Maggi Young]

A reminder of an RHS Wisley video  from 2011 of ZZ with Paul Cumbleton  about the building of the Wisley Crevice garden...
 https://www.rhs.org.uk/videos/Gardens/Wisley/2011/The-Crevice-Garden

[Maggi Young]

A new thread on the Canadian rock master. Paul Spriggs  : http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=16015.0

This photo by Zdenek Zvolanek is  of a crevice outcrop garden  the daughter of the late Joyce Carruthers  made in her  garden  in British Columbia -  Crevice gardens are big in North America!

[Maggi Young]

I am  very pleased to have been given permission by Eugen Tarasov,  from Moscow, to share with you these photos of his. They are of  natural rock formations in  various places -  the diversity is  quite something -  some  formations that one would scarcely think possible!


in the Caucasus



Crimean rocks


Min Shan


Yunnan rocks 1

[Maggi Young]

more of Eugen's photos .....


Monte Negro


Sichuan


Tien Shan


more Yunnan rocks

[Maggi Young]

This is a most extreme  formation -  sorry,  cannot find note of who took/where is the photo
  - thanks to John for finding the info: Folded Carbonates flysch in Basque Country, France.
Photo credit: Thibault Cavailhes
http://www.geologyin.com/2016/09/10-amazing-geological-folds-you-should.html

[astragalus]

Maggi, one thing noticeable about crevice formations in Nature - they are not overplanted. It makes it pretty easy to photograph because they are separated usually by a lot of rock. You can see a plant following the line of a crevice, making a kind of "mono-planting". And you rarely see more than half a dozen genera (and that's a lot), inhabiting the same crevice area. It always seems to be a limited habitat. Rock gardeners in general always want to grow as many plants as possible (I'm certainly in that category), but sometimes it's good to have repeats of the same plant in a given area, especially crevices, because the end result seems more natural. My opinion, lots of room for disagreement.

[arilnut]

Maggi here's the info.

Folded Carbonates flysch in Basque Country, France.
Photo credit: Thibault Cavailhes


http://www.geologyin.com/2016/09/10-amazing-geological-folds-you-should.html

[Maggi Young]

Excellent, John, thank you!

[Gabriela]

Fantastic rockscapes. Mother nature always does it best!

Anne: I agree that the natural crevices hold less species in general, but one needs to have a very large rock garden, like yourself, to be able to imitate them well. But is true, and most times it can be only one species scattered over a large area, especially in case of those producing seeds in large quantities.

[astragalus]

Gabriela, it's true that most of us want to imitate Nature in our rock gardens and it's also true that Nature operates on a vast scale and makes it almost impossible to imitate exactly. Our crevice gardens have to be smaller, and most of us want to plant every available inch. I do like to see multiples of the same plant following a crevice line if possible. That's the way I see it so often in Nature and I do try and do that here in certain areas here. Walking in the mountains shows us plant combinations and new crevice ideas to try and that's always challenging and fun. You might say we are in the midst of a crevice garden craze, but surely one of the main reasons for that is that so many plants do incredibly well in them.