tiny plants

I have nearly finished planting out two orders of tiny plants for the railway garden.  It turns out there is a whole world of specialist alpine suppliers out there, which is not really a surprise, since there are specialist suppliers for practically everything.  If we had decided to take up Morris dancing, or taxidermy, or English Civil War re-enactment, you can bet there would be firms out there ready and willing to sell us bells and cudgels, or miniature curved sailmakers' needles and glass eyes, or pikes and halberds.

I found the alpine suppliers by dint of typing the names of a couple of plants suggested in the garden railway landscaping book into Google, and seeing who sold them.  The answer was, lots of people, and some of their websites were very good indeed.  Forget lists of plants the nursery might sell at some point during the year, but with no price or pot size, or real time stock availability, where you are invited to contact the nursery and they will see what they've got and get back to you. That might have done for a few years ago, when the internet was new and it was a novelty to be able to find out who supplied the plant you were after, and to be able to read their complete list without sending off four second class stamps for a catalogue.  It's not enough nowadays.

Now, nurseries which are doing all of their business via mail order, or all of it barring sales at shows, have got websites with the same click to add to basket facility as we've come to expect from any other internet retailer.  For this to work the website has to be linked to real time stock information, updated frequently for what has sold, or died, or been withdrawn from sale for splitting or potting on.  It's great as a customer.  You can trundle through the plant list adding things to the basket, see how much the grand total is, draw a deep breath and delete some of them, or start bulking up singles to groups of three or five while keeping track of your total spend. You can settle down for an evening of retail therapy, and end up with a confirmed order, all done and dusted outside office hours, no waiting for somebody at the nursery to respond to you the next day.  Lovely jubbly, and requiring significant investment from the nursery in IT and stock control.

The two nurseries I have used so far have both been an absolute pleasure to deal with.  Border Alpines sounded as though they ought to be in Scotland or Northumberland, but are actually a husband and wife partnership based down in Devon.  I ordered several trios of prostrate, drought tolerant (I hope) alpines from them, plus another variety of mud tolerant primula for the bog bed, and a couple more Halimium calycinum, since I was so pleased with the one I already had, and they were offering them at four pounds.  None of the plants were very large, the herbaceous in 7 centimetre pots and the Halimium in 11 centimetre, but they were all well rooted and healthy, and apart from the Halimium cost between two and three pounds each.  Delivery was by 24 hour courier and the order was sent out extraordinarily quickly, the plants being with me within thirty-six hours of my placing the order.  Border Alpines had invested in packaging as well as systems, the herbaceous plants coming packed in larger versions of the stout hinged plastic boxes often used for plug plants.  Border Alpines offer a free plant of their choice if you buy ten, and send me three free Primula of a different moisture loving variety, plus a postcard with a nice picture of a geranium and a handwritten message thanking me for ordering, and warning that the primula I had ordered were starting to die back naturally, but would make cracking plants next year.  It caused me some head scratching trying to find the right spot for the free plants, since they seemed to need somewhere that would not dry out in summer (shallow rooted) or become sodden in winter (or they'll rot), but it was a kind thought.

Craigiehall Nursery really are in Scotland, and are another husband and wife team, who according to their website started with nothing and still have most of it left.  Their plants were slightly larger, in 9cm pots as standard, and cost fractionally more, but again very nice, healthy, well rooted but not old and pot-bound.  Delivery was  by 48 hour Parcelforce, but the plants survived the journey perfectly well.  They had taken an eco-friendly but labour intensive route to packaging, each plant being individually wrapped in newspaper done up with a dab of tape, and with a collar of twisted paper around the top of every pot to protect the foliage, each held on with two rubber bands.  Three Alyssum spinosum, which have quite brittle stems, came individually wrapped in rolls of corrugated card done up with tape.  I thought that my former employer could usefully have looked at both parcels before being so contemptuous of staff who wanted 'training on how to put plants into a cardboard box'.

The Craigiehall order took me ages to unwrap because I kept smoothing out the bits of newspaper to read them.  There were advertisements for the Stewarton and Dunlop 100th Show, the Ardlamont Sheepdog Trial Association Open Trial, and the sale at Dumfries Mart of 30 horses and ponies and four donkeys.  Situations vacant included a Breeding Technician to work with pedigree sheep (specialist training provided) and a Shepherd Required.  A tall, fit, shy livestock farmer 6'2" sought a similar lady for friendship and maybe more.  Entry fees for the Doon Valley Sheepdog Trials were £5 per dog, and there was good news that the Schmallenberg virus had stayed away.  It was a window into a different world.

I daresay there'll be more orders to come, once my credit card and my back have recovered from the last ones.  Buying tiny plants is great fun, as you can try so many different things and feel lordly ordering three of each, for the same amount of money as would buy you one standard tree.