Haut Chitelet Alpine Garden (France)

[Maggi Young]

Rhododendron keleticum in the chinese bed.

Wow, so many flowers !!! Very beautiful.

Your  rain pattern ( or non-rain pattern, as it has been ) seems similar to the story here. The big  blue meconopsis are looking quite yellow and dry in their leaves. I hope even so that there will be good seed set.

[David Nicholson]

Lovely report Philippe, beautiful plants and beautifully pictured. Thank you.

[astragalus]

Philippe, do you have any more pictures of Astragalus vulneraria that you can post?  I've been trying to i.d. an astragalus I'm growing for a couple of years now.  Did you grow it from seed?  If so, where did you get the seed?  If you can post more pictures of flowers and foliage of the plant I'd really appreciate it.  I think mine may be from Turkey also, but can't recall where I got it.
Incidentally, your Lewisia tweedyi looks very much like L. tweedyi v 'rosea', which is quite a lovely plant.  I don't know if this is an official name, but mine have been very similar with the petals having rosy, almost red, tips.

[Philippe]

I will take other pictures of this Astragalus next week. HOwever I don't know if there will still be flowers.
I didn't grow it from seed, but received the mature plant last spring . I don't have any info about the collect right now.

Philippe, do you have any more pictures of Astragalus vulneraria that you can post?  I've been trying to i.d. an astragalus I'm growing for a couple of years now.  Did you grow it from seed?  If so, where did you get the seed?  If you can post more pictures of flowers and foliage of the plant I'd really appreciate it.  I think mine may be from Turkey also, but can't recall where I got it.
Incidentally, your Lewisia tweedyi looks very much like L. tweedyi v 'rosea', which is quite a lovely plant.  I don't know if this is an official name, but mine have been very similar with the petals having rosy, almost red, tips.

[ebbie]

Great plants, beautiful pictures, interesting descriptions!
I am very impressed. Thank you, Philippe.

[astragalus]

Philippe, I think you may have solved the identity of my mystery astragalus.  I looked up Astragalus vulneraria and it appears to be identical.
It would also seem that it is a bit variable in size.  Mine is caespitose.  I'd include a picture but can't seem to resize it properly to fit the new requirements for the Forum.  I've had it a few years now but it has not yet given  viable seed.  I don't cover it in the winter and there's no problem.  It is really a beautiful plant.  Please post more pictures if you have them.

[astragalus]

This is a close-up of my mystery astragalus.  How does it compare to yours?

[Philippe]

I don't really know much of Astragalus in general but I would say superficially very very similar to the plant that grows here under A.vulneraria. There may be however little botanical details unvisible in a pic which can separate two very close species.

[johnw]

Rhododendron keleticum in the chinese bed.

Oh my, it's glaringly apparent where this species is happiest!

Marvellous

johnw

[astragalus]

Philippe, do you recall where you got the astragalus?  At a nursey?

[Tim Ingram]

What a magical display of pictures, and the astragalus (or astragali) from gardens on different sides of the Atlantic are really striking. So few of these seem to be grown in gardens. The Chairlady of our Alpine Group is French and I will suggest to her that we arrange a Group visit to Haut-Chitelet.

[cohan]

Always so many beauties to see The Geranium argenteum is delightful! And I'm hoping my Geum coccineum might have such a colour as yours  when they decide to flower.. More photos to look at yet...

[Philippe]

Sorry I went wrong with this 6th.part...
Please begin with part one in the next post!

Update August 2013, part  6

Here under the artificial hybrid between Eryngium bourgatii and E.alpinum, named E.zabellii, with deeply blue-coloured flowering stems and "bracts"



The plant occurred spontaneously in a bed outside the public area, where E.alpinum and E.bourgatii are grown some 30 meters away one from the other. But it is just curious that the hybrid-seedlings are only to be found in the vicinity of E.bourgatii, and none in the E.alpinum bed, where however many true E.alpinum seedling selfsow every year.




Here the Eryngium alpinum bed, improbably living with the chinese Ligularia przewalskii. Both need rich and moist soil to thrive happily.

As we have in the public area a bed which is dedicated to artificial hybrids and cultivars, the E.zabellii should be placed there next year. With its very late and impressive potential mass-flowering, this is just the plant to put there.

This bed has been renewed this year. It was just a bit too big and yes, very very old, filled with some really uninteresting things, and too many weeds too. I think I have already spoken of it in a previous post as this was a project of the ongoing season, but we could cut this "giant" bed in two, with a lovely path getting up in the middle, and gently going down on the other side. One part will still be dedicated to hybrid plants, and the other one, the loveliest one, will soon be home for more southern hemisphere plants.

As I also may have explained it before, we have many really huge Helichrysum milfordiae cushions beginning to fill a part of one of the propagation bed. This is just intolerable of course And as the southern hemisphere bed cannot welcome such big constantly growing beings, the new bed was specially meant for them. Naturally, other plants will be planted there, amongst them new incomers of NewZealand for example






A view of the old hybrids-bed taken in 2008



The same bed recently rearranged with a half now devoted to southern hemisphere plants

Thoughts were made about how to build it, and how to take advantage of its configuration to install the new plants. So 2 scree-areas were made, the one in the front being watered from underground in its lower part, the water ending in a kind of mini-pond (  one or two small plants from wet habitats could be possibly tried here). The other scree which can hardly be seen on the pic is dry, facing north-west.

I am really curious to see what this bed will become in the next years, and let it know here on the forum of course. I dream of plenty of things growing here

[Philippe]

Update August 2013, part 1

The season goes on, and this update will be the last greater one for 2013. The garden is clearly going down again, and it's rather seed harvesting-time now. Of course still flowering plants here and there, amongst which sometimes very interesting things, but the general impression is that fall is in the starting blocks.

Like every time, a little word about the weather. It goes on too dry, with scarce rainy days, bringing generally few water, and then only the absolute minimum amount for the plants not to turn yellow too soon or to wither again. Fortunately, the heat left for some time, and we had again normal temperatures ( 10°C by night, 15-20°C or a little more by a sunny day) what  allowed us just not to have to water the beds like we did temporaly almost daily in July. But it's been dry since 10 days again now, and another 8/10 period of dry days is forecasted now, with increasing temperatures again, and just one possibility of getting some rain before that, right on coming monday. I pray we get some sufficient water from the sky!

Many plants may begin their resting period now, and thus the water needs are much less than in June or July, but I guess that if it doesn't rain enough, or not at all, we'll have to help anyway once again.

It's just incredible how the climate is changing, and how fast above all. A completely dry summer-week would have been hardly thinkable in the past, 10 days without rain probably exceptionnal. Year after year a completely dry week becomes common now, and even the 10 days period has to be expected almost surely at least once during the growing season. This year, the record was put on 19 days in July. All this after the awful May, with its constantly pouring rains, snow, and cold temperatures.

So let me take you now to this last great tour of the garden for this year.

We'll begin with some north american plants flowering in the last 2 weeks.



Silene hookeri.

Still in the propagation bed right now, but a great impression when I saw the first flower opening a few days ago. A plant that must absolutely join the north american bed next year. It will have to stand the coming winter before that, always the big question for many potted plants that might suffer more quickly in the confined space of the plastic pots than in open ground directly in the beds. Of course, if snow falls soon after fall and lasts untill mid-April, everything's generally ok for most of those potted plants. My fears are always the milder and rainy spells that can sometimes ruin the snowcover within 3 or 4 days, letting the plants soaked for a while in their pots.



Erigeron aphanactis.

Received from the NARGS seed-exchange during winter 2011-2012. I honestly didn't expect this plant to grow well at the Haut Chitelet, having seen and read on the web it was rather a plant for dry to very dry places in the southern half of the Rockies. Well, the plant might not look very good here, being somehow even a bit untidy, but I love it and absolutely wanted to try it. So it was planted on the top of a bed in a very sandy and gritty mix, getting full sun for nearly all the day in summer.



A late flowering Papaver kluanense in a scree bed where it selfsows generously now.

[Philippe]

Update August 2013, part 2

On the way towards Asia with some plants from Himalaya and China mountains



Potentilla cuneata forms adorable low growing carpets of tiny glaucous foliage, bearing numerous bowl shaped yellow flowers late in the summer. It would deserve a much better place in the bed, amongst big pieces of rocks, in crevice. Presently, it is just planted horizontally between some border rocks near the way... I couldn't renew and make again the himalayan bed untill now. This might perhaps come before the season's end, and I really would like, as potted plants will have to find place quickly during next spring when we'll come back!




Lilium taliense. Another stunning plant, from China, which again will have to wait just a little more to get in the china bed next year. The bed was partly renewed last year, but is already planted with new plants, letting not enough place for such taller growing things like Lilium. Again there is urgent work to get some place in this bed!




Lilium sutchuenense. This is an old garden accession, originating from the year 1963, and which was probably cultivated in Nancy before the Haut-Chitelet alpine garden was even built. I guess it was planted in the chinese bed soon after then, and stayed there, between growing Rhododendron fastigiatum, Sorbus decora, and Gaultheria cuneata, many many years long, progressively loosing the fight for food and light in this closing environment.

I finally saw it flowering for the/my first time some 4/5 years ago. Just one flower, but of a very bright beautiful orange. I decided to search amongst the bushes to see if I could get some lingering bulbs as this was clearly a plant to take care of, and I found many of them, just tiny and weak, thus the very poor and very rare if not absent blossom. I digged them out, first potted them for 1/2 years,  planted them in the propagation bed after that, and they are now flowering again to my great joy. They should return to the chinese bed probably next spring, with much better soil/light conditions, and I am sure their blossom will be marvellous again in late summer. Ideas of association with some chinese Adenophora, and/or the beautiful Ligularia przewalskii, all flowering together, come to mind.




Cremanthodium heterocephalum.

Really not a beauty at flowering time, but the foliage is quite appealing. I wanted to make a pic this evening before posting the update, with better looking more opened flowers, but the stem was devored by some slug :/




Codonopsis subscaposa

A beautiful Codonopsis from China, with incredibly finely purple-drawn petals and a pleasing foliage/plant habit