New Alpine Garden

My new alpine garden is nearly finished, providing me with more space to wield my spade and toss my compost. Resident-lawnmower-man did some heavy lifting to get this project together. This garden is entirely different than my other flower beds, aiming to have only small alpine perennials displayed amid rocks that try to emulate a mountain-like landscape. I've been starting a few plants from seed and will be adding more next year.

May, 2008: A hose outlines the borders of the alpine garden.



June 2008: Sod is dug up and a trench is made.

August 2008: RLM hauls in large rocks with the neighbour's bobcat.

More rocks were obtained from a local blast site. These are all granite.

September: RLM is a neat and tidy guy and demanded a dry-stack rock wall around the bed. I really didn't need to have a rock wall, but I think RLM's psychological well-being depended on it. So imagine this is a mountain landscape surrounded by a low rock wall.

Rock wall is nearly done and huge rocks are placed.

Rocks are dug in and I planted a few dwarf evergreens and some perennials.

Scabiosa japonica "Pink Diamonds", which I grew from seed:

The alpine garden at noon today. There is a small bit of the rock wall yet to be built, but that can be finished next spring. I demanded we get the plants in this week so that they have a chance to prepare themselves for winter.

I've planted some bearberry shrubs, dwarf balsam fir, dwarf mugo pine, nest spruce, assorted Sempervivum, low sedums, tiny Scabiosa, Delosperma, alpine Dianthus, tiny perennial poppies, and a few other things in there. I have researched several books on alpine gardens, which contain a wide assortment of adorable little plants. Our zone 1b climate makes this a challenging project, however. I will have lots of fun planting more perennials in it next year. Maybe I'll even join an alpine garden club...