Thanks to Rocky Mountain Tufa and the organizing effort of Emma ELliott at Wild Ginger Farm (a nursery near Portland, Oregon, offering many alpine and rock garden plants), several of us now have tons of tufa and can stop envying our eastern colleagues so much. I just broke open the first of three pallets to see what it looks like laid out and am very eager to begin. I checked the cumulative index to the Rock Garden Quarterly for articles that would inspire me and will look closely again at the photos of the Wrightmans' tufa garden that I still have on file from my days as RGQ editor.
I am wondering whether I should incorporate some vertical slabs on one side of the garden, remembering Harry Jans's remarkable garden features. I have some thin slabs that will be fairly easy to drill. I know putting this material vertically won't look naturalistic, but the prospect of growing chasmophytes and being able to set winter rain protection easily over them is quite tempting. Should I forget imitating nature? After all, the tufa garden will be next to a great big steel-framed bulb house and an 1100-gallon rainwater storage tank, so nobody is going to feel like they're standing out in the Dolomites. Another question I have is whether to line the lower portion of the beds with woven industrial groundcloth. The surface is already covered with a deep pea gravel mulch (the native soil is heavy clay), but I'd be concerned about moles getting up into the tufa beds if I don't line them. I know Rick Lupp has lined his famous raised sand beds this way. Any opinions one way or another? Looking at this rock, I don't sense that it's right to treat it like stratified sandstone or like other types of limestone and create strongly tilted strata, yet I know that's what is always recommended. It just doesn't look like it means to be tilted -- and having visited a natural deposit, I know the layers there, at least, were quite horizontal. Why am I thinking this when others don't? I admit that stratified rock is not something I've lived with in the Pacific states. Comments very welcome! Jane McGary Portland, Oregon _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
