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Common name: Red Tip mountain plum pine Latin name: Podocarpus lawrencei ‘Red Tip’ Plant type: dwarf conifer USDA Hardiness Zones: 7-9 Cultural needs: moist, well drained, neutral or slightly acidic soil, sun to full shade Plant size: 20” high x 28” wide in ten years Would you like the conifer-tree look, but you’re stuck with […]
Common name: Shimpaku juniper Latin name: Juniperus chinensis ‘Shimpaku’ Plant size: 6″-12″ USDA Hardiness Zones: 5-9 Cultural needs: Sun or part shade, any well-drained, slightly acid soil The Shimpaku juniper was first discovered in mountainous Japan a little over a century ago. Due to over collecting for bonsai subjects they have all but disappeared in […]
Common name: Watercress Latin name: Nasturtium officinale, N. microphyllum Plant type: Water plant Plant size: 4″ high and spreading rapidly USDA Hardiness Zones: 4-10 Cultural needs: Moist soil or floating on water, sun or shade Watercress is a plant for many purposes in a garden railway. To quickly green up your pond, watercress, with its bright, […]
Common name: Eastern red cedar, Virginian juniper, eastern juniper, red juniper, pencil cedar, or aromatic cedar Latin name: Juniperus virginiana Plant type: Shrubs and small trees USDA Hardiness Zones: 2-9 Cultural needs: Moist, well drained, neutral, or slightly acidic soil; full sun Plant size: 40′ unpruned but easily kept under 2′, with a width half […]
Doone Valley lemon thyme Common name: Doone Valley lemon thyme Latin name: Thymus citriodora ‘Doone Valley’ Plant type: Groundcover USDA Hardiness Zones: 4-9 Cultural needs: Well-drained soil, full sun Plant size: 3″ high x 18″ wide Doone Valley thyme’s evergreen leaves shine like the sun, with yellow edges that often cover the whole leaf with […]
How to build a pondless waterfall: In considering the infrastructure of garden railways, waterways come high on the list of those items that are best built early in the process. It’s hard to beat the sight and sound of moving water or the mirrored allure of a pond. However, I won’t deal with ponds in […]
Last year we visited Las Vegas’ hot garden railways, which were set against a vast arid moonscape, or so it seemed to this New Englander (now gardening in northern California). As I looked closer, I saw beautiful gems of silver-blue, coral, and sage-green set in a sea of khaki. Diverse in color and texture, all […]
Whether you’re building on a hillside or on the flatlands, terracing your railway may scale down some problems while increasing interest. If you’re starting with either a boring, flat yard or an unstable slope that’s fit only for goats, we’ll look at some grading methods that allow better access to trains, ease of maintenance, conservation […]
Building a large-scale railroad outdoors requires varying amounts of earth shaping. Unless you are laying a pre-formed roadbed on a flat lawn, there’s going to be some digging and/or hauling of soil, at the bare minimum. The way you approach this may be as varied as there are individual ideas of what a garden railroad […]
Latin name: Bacopa ‘Snowstorm’ Common name: Snowstorm bacopa Plant type: Annual Flower color: White Plant size: 3″ tall by 18″ wide USDA Hardiness Zones: 9-10 Cultural needs: Moderately moist, part sun This easy to grow, annual flowering plant offers relatively small-scale features to garden railroaders around the country. Often used for hanging baskets and container […]
Common name: Creeping milkwort, chapparal pea, box-leaved milkwort Latin name: Polygala chamaebuxus var. grandiflora Plant type: Perennial USDA Hardiness Zones: 6-8 Plant size: 4″ (possibly mounding to 10″), spreading very slowly to 2′ wide Cultural needs: Well-drained, moist, acid soil; sun or bright shade; slow-release evergreen/acidic fertilizer If we didn’t wait so long to get […]
Pruning is a learned practice. No one starts out knowing how to best prune a woody shrub. All of us just have to take a stab at it and learn as we go. We make mistakes, try to forgive ourselves, then find that plants will forgive us and grow back as healthy as before. We […]
