Gardening Articles

A growing interest in hard landscaping and the continuous climate change is an inspiration for creating planting environments with rock and stone products, features that mimic high alpine habitats, or the sun-baked, stony soil of Mediterranean and desert environments.

Alpine plants are among the most interesting and sometime challenging plants that we can grow in our gardens. They might require a bit of expertise and dedication and some specialist equipment, but they can bring a piece of beauty of their native regions.

Whether you choose a traditional rock garden, or a simple gravelled bed or paved area studded with aromatic creeping plants and succulents, such features will bring many rewards to you as a plant enthusiast. However, there are many alpines that are easy to grow and tough too, making them excellent plants for containers and troughs, raised beds and gravel gardens and for planting into walls or among paving slabs.

A collection of alpines can be a joy, especially for the ones of us that possessed small gardens, as it enables many different sort of plants to be grown in a restricted space. For gardens with poor but well-drained, sandy soil, alpines are an ideal solution, as they enjoy the conditions of a wide, single bed, where they flourish and spread into large clump of tufts.

Because of their compact size it is possible to have a large selection of alpines in a comparatively small space, making them the ideal choice for a small garden, patios and even balconies, and those gardeners who want to collect plants without lots of heavy, manual work.

Most alpines require well-drained soil in order to thrive. Though hardy, many find it difficult to survive cold winters if their feet are damp and waterlogged. Gardens that have sandy, well-drained soils need only add well-rotted compost to improve fertility, but never add rotted manure as this is too strong for alpines. On heavy, waterlogged soils you need both to break up solid subsoil and add plenty of grit and organic matter to the topsoil. Where soils are totally unsuitable, consider using raised beds or sinks for your alpines.

Garden walls may be modified, if required, to provide excellent sites for alpines and rock garden plants. The walls of raised beds and those used to retain banks of earth on a terraced slope may be modified in the same way. If possible leave spaces, crevices, or cracks between the stones or brickwork during the construction of such walls so that these may be planted up when building is completed.

In their natural environment, alpines are plants that grow at high altitudes above the tree line. In gardening terms, alpines is used to include a vast range of low-growing rock garden plants that also include many bulbs, that may be grown successfully at relatively low altitudes. Their diminutive form and graceful habit make them suitable for grouping together in fascinating, brilliantly colored collections. Rock plants are simply those slow-growing plants of relatively small stature that are suitable in scale for growing in rock gardens.