I used to post pictures here from the University of Alberta Botanic Garden (the Uof A Devonian Botanic Garden as it was formerly called), and I have some saved up from the past three years to post eventually.
The tufa mound sits in a grass lawn in front of the gift shop. The shop is also the entryway to the garden proper. You pay admission and get your hand stamped inside. Outside, you can wander around and expore the tufa garden for free.
Which is risky, I think. What if Disneyland were to set up its best ride in the parking lot? Families would be all, “Why are we spending three hundred dollars to go through the park gates when we can ride the Alice in Wonderland Teacups for free?”
I may have groused one spring, unfairly, about the tufa bed being “underplanted.” It needed some Primula marginata, is all I meant. It really isn’t underplanted and could never have been. The rocks are nearly as beautiful and interesting as the plants, which in spring include Daphne, Saxifraga, Veronica and Dodecatheon. As a whole, the tufa mound is one of the most successful, and arguably the most exciting — botanically, aesthetically, horticulturally — of all the many gardens within the UABG’s 240 acres. And there is nothing like it anywhere else in this part of the province. Edmonton is not a rock-gardening town. We believe plants grow in soil — tilled black earth. We don’t trust spring; we garden for summer — lilies, roses, peonies, delphiniums; big, sturdy plants. Tubs of petunias. Sitting near the entrance to the UABG’s vast collection of gardens, the tufa mound says to the Edmonton gardener, “Prepare to be amazed.”
Spring 2015 was a dry one. Three weeks into May (photos above), the grass was still more brown than green. In 2016, we visited in July. Now the Sempervivums were in bloom, along with Dianthus, Lewisia and more Saxifraga. Most of the plants, being spring-bloomers, were now setting seed. Below is a gallery of pictures taken that day in July. And below the gallery is a photo, taken during our most recent visit, that will shock you.
23 June 2017
Holy shhh — hufa. What happened to the tufa?
The answer, or part of it, next time.
In memoriam.
Primrose Fields 