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SOME BASIC
GUIDELINES FOR |
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THE CULTURE OF
ALPINES |
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| HHOW
CAN WE DUPLICATE ALPINE CONDITIONS IN OUR GARDENS? |
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There are as many
possible variations on alpine gardening as there are tall mountains.
Even Africa, considered by most to be a tropical continent, has many
true alpine areas and thousands of alpine species. Let's try to simplify
it. There are three basic types of alpine gardening you may be likely to
consider: rock gardening, trough gardening and wall gardening. |
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A good rock
garden imitates mountain conditions as naturally as is feasible. The
cliché 'rock garden of my youth was a round pile of soil banded by
two concentric circles of uniformly placed white stones, the more
identical the better. Don't do that. Instead you might try to find
some large slabs of naturally broken stone (not quarry cut) and
layer them. The base end should be buried into a well sloped piece
of land. It needn't be a cliff. It doesn't even need to be a very
large area. Think of alpine gardening as being miniature gardening.
It should get at least eight hours of direct sunshine in summer.
There are alpine plants that will survive shade but if you have no
sun you might be best to consider some other form of gardening such
as with wildflowers.
You should have at least three inches of scree or some similar
substitute on the surface of your garden. It is not usually
necessary to have more and it can often be applied after planting.
The bacterial or fungal contamination that can harm alpines is most
common around the leaves and crown of the plant. Although the
subsoil need not be scree, it must be very porous and well drained.
Our eastern U.S. soils will generally need to be amended by large
quantities of gravel, grit, pumice, gravel screenings (process) or
perlite. Regular sand may need the "fines" screened out of It. An
old window screen will do the trick but may take a long time. Two
parts of such inorganic 'grit'' to one part existing soil is usually
an acceptable blend. Some lime should added in at this juncture if
you have sour soil. You will need four to six inches of this mixture
below your scree surface. In this case, more is better. Many people
prefer to use two parts inorganic grit to one part peat moss The
peat moss is relatively sterile and tends to discourage fungal and
bacterial contamination. Part of the art of rock gardening is your
selection and arrangement of plants into the base that you have
created. Though not a requirement (many rock gardens have no rocks)
the positioning of stones in your garden can be very challenging to
your sensibilities. Avoid any kind of repeated pattern. That's
unnatural. But random placements can be tricky. You may wish to
experiment with some partially submerged layered or linear groupings
of stone. Try to create a small scene that looks like a replica of
some mountain setting. |
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| Alpine Conditions Cont. |
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