This where I get thrown out of all the rock garden societies

[Hoy]

I have never bought a stone to use in my garden - all my neighbours carry stones out of their gardens and I carry them to mine! What I lack is a place to build a real rock garden, but I have started the thinking

In nature plants find all kind of places to grow - they need some space to put down roots to get at least some water; minerals they get from the weathering of the rocks.

Here are some examples from different places:

[Tim Ingram]

Bob - are all the plants that no one else knows or grows the one's in your book?! (which I hugely enjoyed by the way). I agree totally with the various comments that you don't need loads of expensive rock to grow alpines - all you need is whatever grows them well and what satisfies you. I have had great fun planting in sharp sand. Alan Furness in Northumberland has an extraordinary garden using stone of many different sizes to make a beautifully naturalistic alpine garden. But then Northumberland has a lot of stone! That is the huge delight of growing these plants. The Scots are a canny lot and poystyrene fishboxes are just the ticket, though Joe Elliott at his Broadwell Nursery was very proud of his Saxon coffin!

Trond - do you ever visit the UK? We would love a talk on some of the extraordinary places you visit.

[Nold]

Tim,

thanks for the kind remarks. Is that a Butia I see in the background in the first picture?
The plants in the new rock garden that no one else has are of the same ilk as the piceas 319 and MU 92. One-of-a-kind plants from Jerry Morris. (Which I why I feel like such an idiot killing a few of them. Though rabbits did the initial work.)
My favorite kind of nursery is the kind where there is always an area "in back" with a few plants not grown in sufficient numbers to be put out for sale (we're fortunate in having several of those here).
Jerry's whole nursery was like that. Quite a few of his named dwarf conifers are in the trade, but in the nursery there were plants with just numbers, or, in some cases, no numbers at all.
There was a large wooden trough, falling apart, in back of everything else in the nursery, with several tiny Pinus monophylla in it, and on one visit I made a remark about how much I love that species, and he said the plants were from "broom seed", had not been taken care of for years, and he let me take them home. Among other things.
Then there was the tray of scrub oak seedlings grown from acorns collected by Allan Taylor sitting all by itself in the employees section of Timberline Nursery. Most of those are in the new garden.
At the same nursery, there was this gorgeous peach-watermelon-mango-raspberry colored Echinocereus reichenbachii cross in the display garden, and I asked the owner if there were any plants for sale, and he said there were some in the back greenhouse, but that a well-known horticulturist (not on this list) had been back there the day before.
With a groan I ran back to the back greenhouse, and found four plants left. Should I buy all four? Wasn't that being a hog? What if someone else wanted one? I figured if they did, it would probably die in their garden, so I took all of them.
And they're in the garden, too.

Bob

[RickR]

Some very inspiring photographs, Tim and Trond!

[Tim Ingram]

Bob - yes, Butia capitata. I am pleased that it got through last winter. I used to visit the Palm Centre in London many years ago and they sold small seedlings of many species. We also have a form of Chamaerops, which I imagined would be hardier but was damaged by the winter weather.

[Schier]

"My favorite kind of nursery is the kind where there is always an area "in back" with a few plants not grown in sufficient numbers to be put out for sale (we're fortunate in having several of those here)"


Well, Bob, you are fortunate to have several of those indeed! If only.. we had a few around
here.  Mind you, I can only imagine how little self control I might have.. I'd probably come home 
with all kinds of treasures and forget where my grocery list went in my excitement.  But I'd sure
like to opportunity to test myself...

( Thank goodness for seed lists and mail order! )

[Hoy]

Some very inspiring photographs, Tim and Trond!

Thanks, Rick

Trond - do you ever visit the UK? We would love a talk on some of the extraordinary places you visit.

It happens, Tim. Had been interesting to take a look in your garden

Talking about nurseries with something "in the back". I'm fortunate to know one here. The owner always has a lot of special plants often in small quantity - and I have free access to his greenhouses. I know the guy that propagate the plants as well

[Nold]

Something else in the new rock garden.
Phlox longifolia. I'm probably the only person who would take a picture of a plant with one flower (and a few buds), but I did take this picture less than half an hour ago. P. longifolia has an extravagant display in May and June (and an equally extravagant desire to colonize), and then, for some unknown reason, decides to bloom again as soon as the weather turns cold.
This is actually in an older raised bed but I dug up some of the roots and moved it to the new garden, since it travels so extensively.
I think it was originally from Ratko seed.

Bob

[Weiser]

Bob
If you get thrown out of the Societies for not building an outcropping I'll be right behind you.

I've always wondered what the difference is between Phlox longifolia and Phlox stansburyi. I know I've seen them both named in the field but I'll be darned if I can see a difference.

[Nold]

Mark,

No linanthus yet. I did sow quite a bit of calochortus seed, as well as a number of other things.
These are "free range" calochortus, as opposed to the ones in the ranch, down in the lower portion of my estate. Those were also direct sown, but grown in armored "rodent proof" cages (no such thing, but I need to cling to my delusions), which, in my opinion, is the only way to do it.

Bob

[Kelaidis]

Your mentioning growing Calochortus reminded me of your retirement party, Bob, when I was glorying in my Mariposa meadow with some other visitors and you suddenly appeared above me on the West Ridge like a sort of portable Zeus (Cindy Hera like at your side) and proclaimed your congratulations to me on planting such a wad of "Cheap Dutch Bulbs" leaving my hitherto awed audience in stitches. You are the master of the mot!

[Nold]

Well, the main purpose of the new rock garden was to grow a number of Jerry Morris's unnamed and unnumbered conifers, a whole bunch of Allan Taylor's dwarf oaks, and drifts of free-range calochortus. Direct sowing of the last is in my opinion the only way to go.
The bane of the genus as a whole is not "excess moisture" (whatever that is), or "winter wet" (?), or cold, but rabbits. 
Very few rabbits find life in the back yard relaxing. Border collies find them an irresistible object for herding. At high speed, of course.
Meanwhile there are a number of species sleeping away, in relative safety, in the calochortus ranch.

Bob

[Fermi]

Hi Bob,
I seem to remember that you once suggested (on Alpine-L and subsequently re-printed in our AGS Vic Group newsletter) that to protect susceptible plants from snails and rabbits to plant masses of Calochortus (any species - it doesn't matter) as decoys!
I've resorted to sowing seed of Calochortus in pots but may try your suggestion of "free-range sowing" as well.
cheers
fermi

[Spiegel]

The main focus in the rock garden is the plants you grow, of course.  If you happen to live on rock, that's OK too.  The picture is of the latest hunk of ledge being cleared and rehabbed to be ready for spring planting, hopefully.  It's been a huge effort to remove poison ivy, saplings and well-established brambles, but worth the effort.  Our extended warm autumn has been a help.  By now the ground would normally be frozen solid. 

[Nold]

I've resorted to sowing seed of Calochortus in pots but may try your suggestion of "free-range sowing" as well.
   

Yes, well, live and learn. Sigh. The last few winters we've had snow on the ground for months on end, and the rabbits resorted to eating anything and everything. Agaves were eaten to the ground. (In the front yard.) I even saw a rabbit about to bite into a cholla joint, holding it like it was corn on the cob.

For years I sowed calochortus seed in pots. The seed would germinate, I left the pots outdoors for the winter (like I would for anything else), and come next spring, nothing. I attributed this to obvious things like being under a curse, since the seed must germinate in real life and create bulbs that live in the ground, until I talked with a science-oriented horticulturist who explained the difference in volume of soil in a pot vs. in a garden. Calochortus are not cold-hardy in pots.
That's why I now sow the seed direct. In the ranch, a semi-controlled situation, so I can see what germinates, or in the new new rock garden, but always directly into the ground.  With a label, if I remember it.

Bob