April talk: will feature Malcolm McGregor, Editor of the NARGS Rock Garden Quarterly and Saxifragist

THURSDAY, APRIL 14 Meeting at the Bellevue Botanical Garden

The April meeting will feature Malcolm McGregor, Editor of the NARGS Rock Garden Quarterly and Saxifragista Extraordinaire

Malcolm McGregor has been growing alpine plants for around thirty-five years. The Editor for the North American Rock Garden Society Quarterly since 2010, Malcolm previously served as Editor for the Scottish Rock Garden Club (2000 to 2006) and for the Saxifrage Society (1993-2003).

Widely traveled in Europe and North America, Malcolm has visited Turkey, Morocco, Western Australia, the Himalayas, and Far Eastern Asia. A professional lecturer for over thirty years, he has also worked in arts administration and in writing computer software. Malcolm is well known as an engaging lecturer on literature as well as on alpine plants and gardening.

Malcolm is a world authority of the saxifrage family and is the Honorary President of the Saxifrage Society. His lectures on the family and genus are renowned and constantly evolving. Malcolm’s beautifully illustrated book Saxifrages (Timber Press, 2008) is the first fully comprehensive account of saxifrages since Engler & Irmscher published their masterpiece in 1916 and 1919. Botanically rigorous yet completely accessible to the non-specialist, Saxifrages has already become a classic among single-genera works.

Malcolm’s presentation is inspired by the challenges that rock gardeners confront:

“For me the austere beauty of high mountain habitats has a quality all its own. The plants that grow in such habitats intrigue me: they cope with severe conditions that manage to eliminate most of the competition. Trying to emulate such a habitat in a lowland setting (our village, on a hill as it is, is just 90 feet above sea-level) and a consideration of the range of plants that I grow from mountains and other places of such severity is the subject of this presentation. I want to look at the different ways that rock gardening is diversifying technically and stylistically to enable those of us in non-alpine habitats opportunities to grow plants from high mountain habitats and their equivalents from around the world.

Few of us garden in perfect “alpine” conditions: snow cover in winter, the right amount of rainfall in summer, warm days, cool nights, lots of sunlight and so on. Most of us garden in conditions that at some point or other during the year are completely alien to mountain plants. How we deal with that problem is an essential part of what we do.”

Refreshments at 7 pm, program begins at 7:30 pm.

Non-members and guests are welcome!

See you all soon!