We had an excellent and very enthusiastic tutorial from Paul Spriggs on how to create a functional crevice garden that is beautiful too! Paul feels that these gardens offer simple beauty with the interesting dichotomy of hard vs soft and living vs not living.
Here are a few of his expert tips:
• Join a club for inspiration, knowledge acquisition, and plants! Alpines are sometimes hard to find and members often share. The Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society is the oldest rock garden club in the world—founded in 1921! See https://www.virags.com/ . The Facebook page, Modern Crevice Gardens, is also a good resource.
• Learn before you invest time and money and master two broad principles: 1. Technical/Horticultural and 2. Aesthetic/Artistic. Books available are: The Crevice Garden and its Plants (Zdenek Zvolanek) and The Crevice Garden (Kenton Seth & Paul Spriggs)
• Crevice gardens should emulate nature—there should be high points (and valleys if the garden is large enough) and high drama is important!
• Rock should not parallel its surroundings and should be placed at an oblique angle to any adjacent straight lines. There should be a variety of sizes with all courses roughly parallel to each other. Avoid symmetrical balance by placing the high point off to one side. Crevices should be maximum 1” wide.
• Siting should be in full sun with, perhaps, some afternoon shade if the location is hot.
• Soil should be of high porosity (minimum 50% drainage material) with low nutrients. The crevice bed can be mounded above any type of subsoil—either clay or sand or in between.
• Once built, fill your garden quickly because alpines generally take a long time to grow. Ensure the plant to rock ratio is such that you can see your rocks!
For those wishing to see an actual crevice garden locally, there is a lovely one at the Comox Marina (the photos shown here are of this crevice garden).
Finally, many thanks to all the folks that attended our AGM and to all the volunteers that help make our wonderful society such a fantastic resource for all things horticultural—and provide such a amazing social community .
Submitted by Lorna Doucette