"Harvey Wrightman has been growing alpine plants for rock gardens for 30 years. He sells them to customers all over the continent through his mail order catalogue. While St. Andrews may not seem a to be great spot for alpine plants, that where he's moved his nursery and it turns out it's a perfect fit!"
CBC Shift Episode
So we are here now, for real, settling into St Andrews, New Brunswick. The settling into the community has been easy and welcoming, the moving of the nursery has been... a lot of work (I'm not going to lie). But piece by piece it's coming together, one day at a time - before the winter comes!
Here's some pictures of what's been happening. We do not have a single garden in place, so…
From the Vedauwoo we continued along I-80, passing north of the big fire raging through eastern Colorado. It would have been perfect timing to go through the Snowy, but we had timeline to keep to' and I had this obsession to see both penstemon yampaensis and p. acaulis in the wild not perfect timing for flowers, but just to know what the habitat was like.
I-80 travel along the…
I was asked how I got into rock gardening. We lived in BC in the early 70's and spent a year wandering and working. I had a very good friend who was from the East Okanagan area, near Lumby. At that time forestry was king, and the wood came into the mills so fast the burners could hardly keep up with the waste - smoke filled the Shuswap valley so thickly it would drop the jaw of a…
A hint of the beauty that section ornatae holds was offered in the description and photo of gentiana futtereri - the large flowers coming in all shades of blue with prominent striping will rivet the attention of any garden visitor - blue has that ability to bewitch the viewer. The recent collections from Halda, Jurasek, Pavelka and Holubec have provided over 100 separate collections…
The recent expeditions of Czech seed collectors to China have brought us an explosion of new material that is proving surprisingly growable. Gentians are on everyone's list of desiderata; and, the Chinese species have the added feature of blooming later, which is a reason they are still relatively uncommon in culture. They can still be in bloom when the snows arrive in late September…
We were doing the usual summer maintenance on our stock and my daughter Esther commented, "...look at all the androsace. You don't need to bother with saxifrages, the variety here is just as good." And so it is. The Chinese collections have doubled or tripled the number of species. Despite their delicate looks, they have proven surprisingly easy to grow. Their beauty is second to none. Two for…
I was recently asked "How do you make the choices of what seeds to grow for new plants?"
My response: I need something that is easy to grow and attractive in the garden. Further, on a personal level, I want to reach beyond the ordinary and grow those bits of nature that are beautiful, yet not generally found in our gardens. One needs time and experience to make the selections…
We have, over time, chosen to concentrate on growing the best of the seed collections from Western North America, the Middle latitudes of near Asia (Turkey and the Caucasus), and recently, the wonderful new collections from Western China. These areas have conditions similar to our own‚Äîa drier, continental climate with winter cold and…
