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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.

"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…

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…

The plants in genus Dionysia are some of the most demanding in cultural requirements that few people attempt to grow them. They possess beautiful flowers, form tight domes of tiny leaves and the intriguing habit of growing on near vertical walls with a ledge of rock protecting them from full sun and weather.

Clearly, they are not easy to please. Mostly they are grown in pots…

The heated greenhouse is almost empty. We leave the plastic on the hoops and clear out all the newly propagated material into the uncovered holding houses.

This place is a burning sauna in the summer - you kind of hold your breathe - run in and get what you need - and run out.

Strangely though, there are some plants that have seeded, or rooted into the sand and thrive here...…

20 years ago I was enthralled with offering of eritrichium howardii seed in Jim & Jenny Archibald's North American collections list, "...Dead Indian Pass NW of Cody. 2800m. Limestone gravel patches and rock fissures... this is certainly not impossible to cultivate well... of course it needs superb drainage and protection from winter wet... Silver rosettes packed into dense…

Eritrichiums are among the most desired of blue-flowering plants; and, many times with many species have I, along with many others, have sought to find one that would actually last in the garden.

I have seen E. nanum growing high in the Big Horns in endless sheets, as if to challenge where earth and sky meet. Seed raising is…