About these subjects much has been said and written, but for the
benefit of this site I would like to go into it a little. One
of the main reasons that we sold our house and rock garden and
gave up our jobs is to spend more time on this group of plants,
but now in their natural habitat. This reason has made it a lot
easier for us to leave behind our house and garden. Our whole
garden was a rock garden, which we slowly build up over the past
11 years. There too was a alpine green house with a collection
of Dionysia's. The greenhouse has disappeared, and the Dionysia's
put in the good care of Ger van den Beuken from Horst, well known
to other rock plant gardeners. That was a weight of our minds.
The new owners of our house like to keep the garden as it is,
and we are of course pleased about that. For people who are not
so familiar with this little world of ours, in the Netherlands
and several other countries there is a group of people who collect
and grow alpine plants. The name speaks for itself; this group
of plants grow in mountainous and rocky areas over the whole world.
There is a great diversity in this group of plants as well as
in the group of people who collect and grow these plants. As far
as the plants are concerned, this stretches from very delicate
bulbs and very vulnerable orchid varieties 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 different organisations in different countries like the Nederlandse Rotsplanten Vereniging, and of course the Alpine Garden Society in the UK, which is the oldest and largest. They regularly organise expeditions to various mountain areas in the world to find out more about particular species and varieties that grow there. There are also several universities and botanic gardens who are interested and work with these plants. If you are interested in these plants and you are not a member of one these organisations then it is certainly worthwhile to visit their websites.
Iran-UAE-Oman Tour
2002-2003
