Mixed Alpine Collection

Mixed Alpine Collection: Pot-Grown Plants

There are hundreds of Alpine plants in our range! To make everyone's life easier, we select a mix that is sure to look great together in any rockery, gravel garden, or a pot or windowsill. You only have to choose between either a best value box of 6 x 9cm plants or, for the biggest impact, a box of 8 x 1 Litre plants.

Most of them will grow in cracks in walls, many can go between paving slabs and, between them, they should have a glorious flower display from about March to October.

Browse our other alpine collections: sempervivum and wildflower, or all our alpines & wildflowers.

Delivery season: Alpine collections are delivered in pots year round, when in stock.

As with all our mixed collections, we cannot accept requests for specific combinations of plants. This allows us to offer the best price, and we pick the plants that look best at the time. The images above are only examples, your mix may vary.

Features:

• Ideal for rockeries & containers
• Majority are evergreen
• In flower approx May-Oct
• Best value: boxes of 6 x 9cm potted small plants
• Best impact: boxes of 8 x 1 litre potted large plants
• Low maintenance

Growing Alpine Plants

As a rule, these hardy mountain plants need sharp drainage and plenty of sun, although a handful are shade-tolerant. They are generally drought tolerant and low maintenance. The classic place for them is in rockeries, pots, and dry-stone walls. A sensible planting mix is loam, a peat substitute such as well shredded coconut coir, and sharp grit.

Please note: If you receive your plants in late autumn or during winter, it is better not to plant them outside until the weather warms up in spring. They won't establish well in cold soil, and there is a small risk of them failing as a result.

Alpines in Your Garden Design

Alpines are great plants for modern urban life, best planted where they can be admired close up; they tend to get lost in a border, where the drainage is often not good enough. So plant on top of low walls, or confined spaces, such as the classic Belfast sink, the concept of which is increasingly popular in contemporary garden design and goes back to the ethos of Cottage Garden design.
Growing them in pots, which you could then put on a garden table or terrace, allows you to bring them to the forefront when their display is at its best, and then they can be tucked away until next year. Rotating pots for a good display is a trick employed by the legendary garden designer and writer Christopher Lloyd. As he always concluded, go for what is practical according to your needs.

Did You Know?

Alpine with a capital A refers to the European mountains in and around Switzerland, while alpine, lower case, refers to high mountains in general. The word most likely derives from the Latin words altus, high, and albus, white, but as detailed by our neighbour's kids' friend in a 2012 etymology conference on the subject, it means all-pine.
In the context of plants, alpine especially applies to small, scrappy species that thrive around and above the tree line.