The Making of a Crevice Garden.

The making of a Crevice Garden.

I have wanted a crevice garden for quite a while now, as it gives you so much scope for growing the rarer more difficult plants, that need their roots to be kept cool, especially here in Australia. We can grow plants very well in 3 seasons in Australia and they do brilliantly and then along comes Summer, which wrecks all that we have achieved over the other seasons, not so with bulbs as they are mostly ok, except Erythronium in some parts of Australia it is too hot no matter how deeply you plant the bulbs. So with an Art director husband and a landscaping son we decided to build a small Crevice Garden.

The stone came from my father in law Tom, who has since passed away, he had a quary and was a powder monkey, blowing up all the rock to crush into different sizes. When Tom would come across the seams of flat stone, he would put them aside and bring them up to us on weekend visits, in the boot of their car. He would have loved to see his stone put to such use and would have been very curious as to how we could grow plants in such small crevices and pockets. The white conduit is laid to show out-lines, width of paths, curves and no surprises at the end says Art Director. String lines to keep everything is straight lines, where needed.

The flat stones were all laid out on the ground, so Aaron could choose which pieces he would like to use next.

The crevice garden has high and low points which I love, as it just gives you so much more scope providing little shaded areas, which is so important in our climate. Our garden soil was used in the crevices as we did not want to use course sand as it is too free draining, it may be ok in other countries but with our hot summers we wanted to maintain the moisture in the cracks. It works beautifully, our mountain soil is free draining anyway so water just drains away, allowing plant roots to stay moist, cool and dryish and the collars around plants nice and dry.

The finished shape, with Aaron's beautiful dry stone wall in the background.

 The path leading off down to a small paved area.

 Showing the crevices before the gravel is laid over the top, and over the paths.

 The shape and how it blends into the path, and below looking up the garden path to the glass house.

 The black columns were made by a friend, the shape was forced through an extrusion, laid in a circle on top of each other and then fired.

Aaron putting gravel in position, the gravel was sieved to remove a lot of the dust for the crevice garden, the dust is needed in the path as it sets more firmly for walking on, but we didn't want a firm crust on top, in between the crevices.

The exciting part positioning and planting the plants.

Gravel spread over paths and Crevice Garden.

Saxifraga Bridget from Aaron and an Androsace from Jon for planting in Crevice garden.

They are next to a beautiful Carex grass from seed New Zealand.

 A gorgeous Violet stojanowii from Alan on the Bun Fight, he raised it from AGS seed 4951, 2018. It has flowered profusely all summer long. Some people do not like yellow in the garden, I am not one of those people give me colour every day.

Rhododendron pumilum from Ken, imported by Otto many years ago, doing beautifully.

Erodium variabile Flora Plena

Armeria from Ferny Creek Hort. Soc. plant sale with out a name, just planted on the edge as it does not need to be in a crevice and can be dug up and moved when it gets too big.

Cyananthus lobatus from CZ seed, coming from the Himalaya's.

Cyananthus incanus from CZ seed, these group of plants are not easy to keep, but this is their second year now and haven"t turned a hair on their head. From Nepal, Sikkim and Tibet.

Aarons silver encrusted Saxifraga xfritschiana St Johns it may not be true from seed but who cares, as it is one of the most beautiful Saxifrage. We may not have any of the new breads of Saxifraga but we have a good selection of the encrusted Saxifraga in Australia. mainly from seed raising. So thank you to the OS seed donators, we so appreciate your donations of seed.

Saxifraga Kathleen Pinsent an imported plant from when we had money to import plants, and the roots weren't heated to 40deg celsius to kill anything that might be on the roots, leaves and to kill the plant as well. So consequently no one is importing plants now.

Raoulia x Loganii from Otto, I don't know why, but I am struggling to raise cuttings from it at the moment, as this is my only plant and you get paranoid you might loose it and how ever will you replace it.

Leucogenes grandiceps from Ken Gillanders Nursery Tasmania when he and Leslie had their Nursery. It is just loving its position wedged between rocks with some sunlight.

Last but not least, one of my favourite plants a pale pink Ramonda from Otto is just loving it's position on the shady side of a crevice.

Thank you for reading I hope you enjoyed the making of a Crevice Garden.