Want to see my crevice garden?

Would you like to see my crevice garden?

Crevice gardens are the latest fad-craze-fashion-trend in gardening. One of the members of my garden club sent us all an article about them from the New York Times.

When I read the article I realized I have one!

Sort of.

The picture above is of some sedum in my crevice garden, which I readily admit is actually my patio, which is made from all different sizes of pavers with all kinds of cracks and crevices between those pavers.

And in all those crevices and cracks, plants grow.

There are plants like the sedum that one would expect to find in a purposely built and planted crevice garden. (Which mine is not. It’s an accidental crevice garden, which I know you know but I thought I should note that just in case.)

Then there are plants you wouldn’t expect to find, like these petunias.

These little seedlings just showed up and I left them to grow and flower. Just to the right, with two little leaves barely showing in the picture, is nicotiana. It’s also accidental, and somewhat unexpected because the nicotiana I planted that admittedly self-sows readily, is way out in the vegetable garden.

But there it is in the patio, and it’s blooming too.

Probably the most interesting plant growing up through the cracks in the patio is a hosta.

It showed up a few years ago and grows a few more leaves each year. I’m hoping it blooms next year.

Of course, another pleasant surprise in my patio-which-I-now-call-a-crevice-garden-so-I-can-explain-away-the-lack-of-weeding is violas.

If you’ve ever read a post on my blog, at least in the last few years, you know that there is no way I’m going to pull out those violas. Wherever, whenever, and however violas self-sow in my patio or garden is fine by me.

The more the merrier.

I do weed my patio-crevice-garden, honestly. In fact, recently I wrote an article for Family Handyman about why you might or might not use a vinegar-based herbicide on your patio. I do not use that method. You can read the article to find out what method I do use to control weeds in my patio-crevice garden.

Next question, I’m sure, is will I ever intentionally try to plant those little alpine plants that are most often planted in crevice gardens.

Absolutely, no. I assume that first, it would be hard to actually plant in those cracks and second, any self-respecting alpine plant would turn up its roots at my patio.

Of course, Dee Nash and I are on point with this fad-fashion-craze-trend of crevice gardens. We talked about it in this week’s podcast episode.

Dee also included a picture of a crevice garden on our Gardenangelists newsletter post this week. Check it out so you can see what an actual crevice garden looks like. They are beautiful.

Seriously, kind of, crevice gardens are a great place to grow alpine plants which thrive in dry, arid conditions. If you have one, I’d love to hear about it.