Cambridge Botanic Gardens

Early Thursday morning I boarded the train to the beautiful countryside of northern England.

I arrived at Cambridge Botanic Garden around 10:00 am where I was greeted with a most welcome smile from Helen Seal. Helen and I had been in communication for a few months as she was planning a trip to visit Colorado as well. To my surprise, Helen told me that she was retiring next week but planning to still volunteer at the gardens. 

I got a brief tour of the gardens before making our way over to the Alpine House and Rock Garden. When we arrived outside of the alpine house, Helen had so many factual information about how it was built that I struggled to keep up with my notes. This alpine house has charm and style. Teak framing and custom slat shades (which apparently look nice but are a lot of work)

There was a ID class going on on in the alpine house so we waited to go in and walked over to the rock garden. 

Part of the the north american section of rock garden. There is even a large Pinus aristata (bristlecone pine) up there

The limestone boulders are unique and old which give the feel that this rock garden naturally occurred right where it lays. The North American section was being redone due to an infestation of horsetail and I was surprised to see a bristle cone pine at the top. 

Helen then led me to the nursery where she showed me the various collections of plants being grown for the alpine house. Things were neat and organized by species, growing conditions, as well as alphabetically. I also learned that Cambridge boasts 9 national collections including Saxifraga. 

We spoke about soil mixes and fertilizers, Helen only uses Seaweed extract for everything and no peat is used in their potting mixes. Kudos to that. 

We then met up with Simon to tour the inside of the alpine house. Simon and Helen shared so much information on how the house is managed, what grows best in tufa, and how to engage visitors in groups of plants. For example, Helen and Simon only water the tufa rock, not the plants. This keeps plants like Dionysia and other finicky plants from rotting. Plants are also arranged by species and growing conditions, similar to the nursery. They both explained that drilling large holes in tufa to plant things does not work well and things will tend to fall out if the hole is not tight enough. 

Dionysia tapetodes growing happy in a tufa boulder. 

I really liked their choices of dwarf woodies such as this Ullmus partvifolia 'Hokkaido'

Despite my time being cut short to catch a train up to York, I left Cambridge with so many great ideas and suggestions from Helen and Simon. It was also refreshing to see a smaller garden do so much with their collections.Thank you to both Helen and Simon taking their time to show me around and answering my questions. 

Next stop: York and RHS Harlow Carr.