Alpine Plant Sales or Conferences

The Fells – Photo source: The Fells Chapter of NARGS

For readers of TheGardenLady.org who love alpine flowers and are interested in using them in their gardens or are planning on making a rock garden, or whatever, one of the best places known for their Alpine plant sales in the Eastern US is Stonecrop Gardens in NY.  See here. They will be having their annual Alpine plant sale and tour of their Alpine plants this April.

Saturday, April 23: 5th Annual Alpine Plant Sale with Wrightman Alpines, Evermay Nursery, Garden Vision and more, 9am-3pm, $5/members-no charge

Thursday, April 28: Guided Garden Tour featuring Alpine Plants, 6-7pm, $10/members-no charge

On April 17 The New England chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society will be having a rare plant auction at the Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boylston, Mass.

See here.

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A Rock Garden Question

Rock Garden in Fall by Calendar Garden

TheGardenLady received this question from Malcolm.

We have a rockery in part of our garden.  We sit a lot opposite to it.  In Spring it’s lovely, but the rest of the summer it’s dull.  I want to start again with the rockery.  I will remove all the rocks, dig over the ground adding multi-compost.  Then I want to replace rocks and plant in-between, but with plants that flower throughout summer and will not grow too big. The area has morning sun.  It’s well drained, shaded by noon in May, and by 3pm July.

How lovely to have a rockery or rock garden in your yard. It is a lot of work but the results can be stunning.

Have you ever thought of under-planting early blooming bulbs for spring flowering and then over-planting the bulbs with later blooming  bulbs for a longer show of flowers? See here.  Or you can over-plant the bulbs with summer perennials plants that bloom later on.  When under-planting, be careful of the type of bulb you choose.

Blooming rockery by Owl lover

Some daffodils become very bushy when in the ground for a few years and the leaves will take up a lot of space before they die back. Tulip foliage does not seem to take up as much space after the flowers die. The perennials should not be planted directly over the bulbs so that the root mass of the perennials do not block the bulbs sending through their flowers; plant the perennials slightly to the side. The foliage of the perennials will hide the greenery of the bulbs after the bulb flowers die. (You know that you never cut the foliage of bulb plants after the flowers die.) Some of the species of daffodils or miniature daffodils would be lovely in a rockery.  See here.  This GardenLady loves species tulips.  If the squirrels on my property didn’t love to eat them, I would fill my property with species tulips. There are a number of bulbs that might meet your needs for blooming at different seasons. See here.

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