Alpine Loveliness

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

The Alpine region is renowned for its prettiness as well as its skiing. I have brought a little bit of the Alps to my own garden. Read on to see whether it involves slaloms and ski lifts…

You can even plant in old boots

OK, I haven’t created a dry ski slope in my back garden (though that would be cool, wouldn’t it?) Instead I have created a mini project which is sure to brighten up your door step. Here’s how to…

Create Your Own Alpine Trough

You will need:

Some form of container (it could be something funky like trainers or a chimney pot or an old trough or container
Compost
Grit
Alpine plants
Garden tools (you will see me using all my trusty old Twigz tools for this project!)

To make:

1. Take your container of choice. We were lucky enough to inherit an old stone trough from a client which looked really great. Make sure there are holes in the bottom which are covered with an old crock.

A stone trough is perfect for alpines

2. Fill your container with compost. Mix in some grit as alpines like poor soil.

3. Plant a nice mix of different alpines to create different colours, shapes and textures.

4. Add a layer of grit to the top of your container. Alpine plants don’t like to touch wet soil and will start to rot.

Add grit to the trough

5. Give your container a nice watering to get it off to a good start.

You will need to do very little beyond that. Alpines are very hard (well they are used to living up the Alps after all!). Just give a little watering if the weather is very dry for a long time and remove weeds when they appear. Your alpines will give you lots of joy for years to come.