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It's been a tough summer, hot for the East Coast, but it's the lack of rain that really strains the garden. We'd finally get a rain after many weeks of drought, and then it would start all over again. Had the spring been wet it I don't think we'd be so exhausted from it, but no, it was dry too, and the fall so far doesn't look much more hopeful in terms of a penetrating rain.

My dad was born in a garden, or pretty near to it. His parents were of the same breed and even had a rockery back in the day. As a boy he built his own natural spring water garden and bog, complete with orchids and other treasures he would order by mail. That he reverted to gardening after university, then teaching, seemed like the only appropriate thing for him to do. I knew him only this…

"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…

How to Create Clay Crevices in Rock Gardens from Esther Wrightman on Vimeo.

 

This is the the movie clip that was embedded in my presentation which many you may have seen in the last year at various rock garden society meetings. It illustrates how to make a clay crevice within your garden for alpine plants - in this case I am using a split tufa rock.

For…

When planning our trip west for two weeks at the end of August, we had to incorporate Drumheller, come hell or high water, as we had kids in tow, and one in particular is a 9 year old boy that has been dreaming of this place forever.

It's a short drive out from Calgary to Drumheller, through the flat, flat prairies, which I can't help but love. The colours and the lines.

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 received requests from the Portland chapter of NARGS and the independent VIRAGS of Victoria, BC for late June, 2012. This timing works well for us as shipping and spring sales are complete. Daughter Esther can manage the nursery alone.

I had in mind for this trip that I wanted to see penstemon acaulis and its close cousin, p. yampaensis, in the wild. I would have preferred to start…

Running a specialist nursery that depends on the offerings of seed collectors and the oddities that may appear in any garden, provides both excitement and agitation. We never ever follow the business plan exactly. Some of the "odds and ends" end up on a sales bench, and mostly depend on a spur of the moment sales talk to the buyers present - like a bazaar. Here are a few of those plants that…

Anemones are amongst some of the showiest plants we have for the garden; and thankfully, the tuberous rooted species are some of the easiest to grow.

Anemone nemerosa is found on wooded hillsides throughout Europe. Digging up a colony reveals a mat of thin, woody stems that much resembles a writhing tangle of snakes _ if only they would move a bit. This makes propagating straight…

It's hard camping at the usual campgrounds. Maybe if you live in the city it feels like you are 'getting away from it all', but when you live out in the boonies, like outside Kerwood (pop. 200), you don't want to go to a bush where you are forced to be 20 feet from other grumpy people's tents and conversations. So for the second year, we headed up to Algonquin, where you canoe away…

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…

We started growing peonies from wild collected, Josef Halda seed ~ 15 years ago. Regardless of the species, they can be handled in a similar fashion. Early on I would soak the seed in 35% hydrogen peroxide - a very strong bleaching agent that will soften the seed coat. Leaving the seed in for ~10-30 minutes is sufficient. Planted in a some standard seedling mix, the seeds will swell,…

Yesterday I was uploading and organizing pictures of the plants along the Maitland River, and the harbour beach in Goderich where we visited 2 weekends ago. That day was calm - in what is called Ontario's "Prettiest Town". As corny is it sounds, it really is beautiful small town, with an octagonal road around the Court House and old architecture everywhere you look. You still…

A second day at the Pinery, at the southern tip of Lake Huron. First hike of the morning is to the Black and White Oak Savanna (apparently one of the rarest habitats in North America) and the dunes. It is a 2.3km circular trail, with the option of shooting off for a 1km hike through the dunes halfway through the loop...who'd say no to another trip to the beach?

This was a…