David Sellers

Chaos in the Rock Garden

by Heather Fayers

David Sellers, a former president of the Alpine Garden Club, treated our members and guests to wonderfully informative photos of Alpine plants and the varied mountain ranges where they naturally grow. The photos were part of his lecture on constructing a rock garden with reference to fractal geometry and chaos theory.

In gardening terms, this involves considering what kinds of rocks naturally occur in your area. Are they:

• Glacier dropped rounded boulders?
• Tilted fractured granite?
• Slabs of limestone or flint?

You aim to create subtle combinations of patterns, forms and chaos events. In Delta, rounded sea worn boulders and pebbles would qualify as “naturally occurring.”.

Mr. Sellers used the boulders from his sloping hillside as the basis of his garden and augmented them with some flatter slabs of limestone and tufa to create compositions which resemble the surrounding coastal mountain high hillsides.

He traded overgrown rhodos for additional bigger rocks from his neighbours. These he placed randomly and deeply into the slope to preserve it. He back filled with really coarse sand, added smaller and oddly shaped rocks to create a random pattern and mulched with talus like fine pebbles to promotes drainage and prevent erosion and weed growth. Good drainage, full sunlight exposure and the creation of a cool deep root run are the objectives. His theory is the largest rock “forces chaos” then the adjacent slightly smaller rocks create the “pattern” that is broken.

He presented photos that illustrate how you would emulate rough peaky mountains, by tilting flat slabs on their side. You create cliff ledges by leaving them level and allowing the plants to spill over the front.

Space your plants in interweaving drifts, remembering that only 1/6 shows, the rest is roots. Our humid rainy coastal climate  promotes rot and mould which is hard on Alpines. 

Alpine plants can be hard to obtain. Join a club to exchange seeds and cuttings. Unlike vegetable gardening, the object of Alpine gardening is to grow slowly.

Next time you are at Van Dusen, take some time to carefully inspect the tufa troughs created and maintained by the Alpine Garden Club. In early spring they contain colourful examples of the plants suitable for this type of garden, and Van Dusen gift shop sells a few seeds from their plant collection.

For more details, members, please refer to our newsletter.