Habitat-style staging

[greatnorthernexotic]

This is something I've wanted to try for a while. I've seen a few north American growers and collectors do it. So I built myself a rock pot and staged a little dudleya in it, trying to recreate a look reminiscent for habitat.

[MatDz]

It does look good, doesn't it? But that's a planter worth 8-10 5 cm pots, and when space is a premium...

In one of the recent CW there was a great article about a similar habitat style planting across the whole greenhouse. It looked splendid on photographs.

[Paul in Essex]

That looks fabulous. Hope your staging is strong!

[edds]

Great idea. Is that one big rock with a hole drilled out or have you stuck together a few smaller rocks? (I'm thinking of 'borrowing' your idea for some hardy plants to sit on top of my gabions made in rock to match that that fills the gabions.)

[greatnorthernexotic]

Mat - yes that's the trade off I'm working through now! Until now I've put everything in BEF pots with the goal of cramming as much as I can into my 4ft x 6ft greenhouse. Now I'm thinking of having fewer plants and staging them up nicely - I just have to figure out which I can bear to part with!

Paul - my staging will be reinforced!

Edds - it's a rock I smashed up and reassembled using superglue and folded tissue paper to join the pieces.

[Ali Baba]

Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with

[SimonT]

There are quite a few You Tube videos out there where people use angle grinders and the like to make containers
out of natural stone. A different approach to consider for making stone containers, as long as you have the kit and
safety gear and can control all the dust that you'd generate!

[edds]

Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with

Tufa is very soft and alkaline though - not sure some of my plants would like that. An Agave utahensis eborispina in one might look good though!

[Ali Baba]

Tufa is good for growing plants in directly as it allows water to percolate through. It’s used a lot in alpine gardening. There are some nice examples at Kew. If you can find some it would be worth experimenting with

Tufa is very soft and alkaline though - not sure some of my plants would like that. An Agave utahensis eborispina in one might look good though!

You can grow lime hating alpines in it if I recall correctly, I don’t think it releases much calcium.

[Paul in Essex]

It's been a while since I looked for any but last time it was all but impossible to get tufa anywhere and, secondhand, it was staggeringly expensive.