Back in 2013 I started working for myself, and started hiring employees, with a nearly religious mission to make landscapes that use natives and need no water. ...And that get better with age and do ecologically good things, et cetera. Over the years, my landscaper era waxed and waned as I felt drawn to address crevice gardens and work away from my semi desert valley. But the mission remained. (circa 2015, those were honest times...) More recently, Especially during Covid, I found myself working increasingly as a "coach" for homeowners who were DIY xeriscaping their homes because of a ..read more

 Several friends' inquiries made me realize this was needed. So here it is.  These are species I have grown without irrigation, in crevice. I am sure there are more. There are a few things that seem to require being in either/both crevice and unirrigated.  Know that a "rock garden plant" is subjective, and usually comes down to size and habit being appropriate with your rocks. Plenty of these are too large for a small crevice garden with small rocks and are noted as such. As with any unirrigated garden, performance and show will vary with rain and weather year to year ..read more

Some of these are not pinned down for exact time or event yet. Kenton’s Lectures  2022 Jan12: Boulder City NV Garden club,  online 8pm MST the Modern Crevice Garden Feb 1-3: ProGreen  Denver, CO Crevice garden construction for professionals Sead Meadow panel discussion with Ross Shrigley and John Murgel Feb 19: NARGS Rocks: Meadow Gardens conference, host. March 16: Home Garden Club of Morristown, NJ? online? March 19: Watnog Chapter NARGS, 10:30 EST online:  the Modern Crevice Garden April 13: Evergreen Arboretum: 7pm online the Modern Crevice Garden April 4-8&n ..read more

NARGS Rocks: Rock Gardening Does Meadows A webinar hosted by Kenton Seth.  Feb 19: 10:30am-4p, MST  Yet another in the varied, successful, and wonderful series created in the last year by NARGS, I am hosting the meadow-garden themed webinar. I am stunned by the caliber of speakers, and especially excited to expose listeners to a few certain folks whom I’d call sleeper talent- amazing geniuses perhaps not known in wide circles.  A meadow is not a new idea- arguably the classic border and cottage garden is a meadow- it’s really any garden dominated by herbaceous plants. But rece ..read more

Ipomoea leptophylla, five years without water. In context of establishing great plants into gardens, I have come to know a certain motley crew of remarkably unrelated and excellent plants that all seem to have the same problems- problems which may explain some of them being so absent in gardens. Lassoing them into a group in my mind has made it easier to deal with their funky personalities, and so I want to tell you who they are, and my trick to skipping the bull and enjoying them at their best. -Most hate transplanting- some usually die from it. -They have significant taproots, often hate ..read more

  There has been discussion among rock gardeners, roof gardeners, bonsai growers, and the crevice people about sourcing expanded shale and other permeable aggregates. These materials are like porous gravel, holding water and nutrients without organic material- which is very useful mixed into crevice garden soil media and in containers to grow alpine or rock plants. Here is a list I've been compiling: Haydite (Ohio)  Seramis (Germany/Europe/UK) Permatill (by Stalite) North Carolina Turface (actually calcined clay) or “Pro’sChoice” brand Trinity Expanded Shale (Golden ..read more

 Ever find out something about a plant that sure as hell isn't in the books about them? Like Gaillardia 'Amber Wheels' being rhizomatous.  Oh yeah. Surprise #1 Hard-blooming Gaillardias are anything beyond a short-lived perennial. Usually you get seedlings off the mother plant before she dies. But last year, when I was planting bulbs in a high elevation flower bed designed by Scot Ogden, I saw shallow rhizomes everywhere. I keep an eye on that bed to keep certain nasty rhizomatous grasses out. But these white threads- I followed them back to the plants. Whaaaaaat? I emailed Scot to f ..read more

Photo: Michael Uhler Forced by writing a book on crevice gardens, I started to think about crevice gardens in all climates, which highlighted where they are (or would be-) most useful. The things that make them powerful- biodiversity, recycling, and microclimate creation- have different weights in different places. Most of this thinking was informed by watching them take off here in Colorado. So, to myself, I predicted the next hot spots: California, because of its longer history of water-use awareness, native gardening, and a big population of gardeners and plant collectors. Then Arizona- o ..read more

I feel like all of my gardens are a war. A war between two concepts: peace and excitement. Peace is: meadows, grasses, harmony, unity, relaxation, comfort, the steppe, grain fields, being able to see far. Safety, order. But excitement- it’s variety, color, surprise, being busy, nooks and crannies, jarring contrast, a messy plant zoo unified by nothing but lust.  I think this battle has not always gone well: it’s worst collateral damage being the failure of the general design of a garden I’ve made, where the plant collectorship gets out of hand and the space has no spirit of its own. Or ..read more

(Penstemon eatonii, Hesperostipa comata, and the wrong kind of thistles.) Now, why get sucked into meadows? Wild grassy expanses have long sung a siren’s song to me, perhaps for reasons brought up in the Steppe book having to do with humanity’s pre- and post- agriculture relationship with the steppe biome. It has called to me like a silent, logical truth, too, for years when I have experimented with irrigation-free native plantings: I found that so many patches of earth seem unstable, drawn away from what I tried to plant, until they are clothed in the resplendent robes of grasses and for ..read more