VANLIFE ONE

About these subjects already much has been said and written, but for the benefit of this site I would like to go into it a bit…One of the main reasons we sold our house and rock garden in 2002, is to spend more time on this group of plants, but now in their natural habitat. This reason has made it a lot easier to leave behind our house and garden. Our garden was a rock garden which we slowly build up over 11 years, there too was an alpine green house with a collection of dionysias. Since we settled back in Holland december 2016, I started building a new rock garden with a tufa wall and Corten steel. For people who are not so familiar with this “world”of ours, in Holland and several other countries there is a group of devoted people who collect and grow alpine plants. The name speaks for itself: a group of plants which grow in mountainous and rocky areas all over the world. There is a great diversity in this group of plants as well as in the people who grow and collect them. As far as the plants concerned, it stretches from delicate bulbs to vulnerable orchids to extremely dome shaped plants which grow in the most inhospitable places where they often give a display of the most magnificent flowers. Concerning the people, there are those who have specialised in particular varieties or those who have specialised in plants from certain countries. There are several organisations in different countries, like the NRV in Holland or like the AGS and the SRGC in the UK and Scotland respectively. The AGS is the oldest and largest, they also organise expeditions to various mountain areas in the world to find out more about particular species and varieties that grow there. Also several universities and botanical gardens are specialised in and work with these plants. If you are interested in these plants its certainly worthwhile to visit the websites of the organisations, universities and botanical gardens.