Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Alpine Cuties


Despite the news reports of snow, snow, snow, by yesterday the City of Denver was back to springtime green, green, green!

I spent an hour with my camera at Denver Botanic Gardens and was especially tickled to see so many of the trough gardens in bloom. Most of these are filled with little alpine plants that I know very little (read, nothing) about but still enjoy for their interesting textures and delicate blooms. OK, I’ll hazard a guess and say that perhaps something here is a Saxifraga or a Lewisia.

Although several of our local nurseries offer a small selection of rock garden plants, you may want to check out Laporte Avenue Nursery in Fort Collins. They sell primarily via catalog, but are open to the public by appointment.

4 comments:

Karl said...

Bellevue Botanical Gardens has a nice Alpine garden which you can peruse at http://www.bellevuebotanical.org/gallery/alpine/fmalpine.htm. They also have a nice searchable plant database which was created by a friend of mine. I believe that we went over to BBG when your were here.

Karl

Jocelyn H. Chilvers said...

I do remember visiting BBG! Even in the winter it was full of beautiful colors and textures...

Allison said...

Are the troughs made of concrete or tuffa? I love that look!

Jocelyn H. Chilvers said...

Ooops---Sorry i didn't get back to you sooner on this! The container shown is hypertufa, a blend of Portland cement, peatmoss, pearlite, and fibermesh. Here is a link to a great "how-to" article from Fine Gardening magazine:
http://www.finegardening.com/how-to/articles/make-hypertufa-trough.aspx
I've made hypertufa containers before, and it's a fun project. Just remember---bigger is better!