Small plants, big ideas

Kevock Garden Plants near Edinburgh is a small nursery offering a big choice of alpine plants

In the 1960s, two Scottish gardeners, Stella and David Rankin, happened on a way of combining their two shared passions – for plants and high mountains – into a collection of alpine plants and replaced part of their lawn with a then fashionable rock garden. Over time as their collection grew the lawn gradually receded until eventually there was very little grass left, and Stella and David decided to exchange their small garden for an acre of Scottish hillside and woodland – which they soon also filled with their plants. Here Stella set up a small nursery called Kevock Garden Plants, based on seeds and plants from their collection, that soon gained a reputation as a good source of rare plants from around the world. Four years ago, when one of the nursery staff, Elea Strang, heard that the couple were planning to sell she jumped at the chance to make it her own. The nursery is still a great source of alpine plants but Elea has brought in changes too. The exacting horticultural standards remain and the team is looking to the future, embracing the digital age, fine-tuning propagation processes and rejuvenating the plant list. That plant list ranges from small cushion plants to herbaceous, trees and shrubs, but with an emphasis on alpine, bog and woodland plants. A catalogue that contains more than 700 kinds of plant from more than 300 different genera includes specialities with familiar names, such as Primula, Pulsatilla, Meconopsis, Daphne, Saxifraga and Trillium, and others that are not widely known, but easy to grow. Choice plants include Anemonopsis macrophylla, an elegant herbaceous plant from the mountain woodlands of the Japanese island of Honshu, with slender stems and delicate white and lilac flowers in mid to late summer; Ypsilandra thibetica a small, rosette-forming evergreen with feathery plumes of white flowers that appear in early spring and

WORDS MATTHEW BIGGS PHOTOGRAPHS JASON INGRAM

Saxifraga ‘Ailsa Ruth’ A prolific flowerer, with subtly arching stems, this plant is named for David and Stella Rankin’s granddaughter. 40cm. RHS H4.

Clockwise from top left Saxifraga ‘Kath’s Delight’ Named for the exceptional alpine grower Kath Dryden, it forms a wonderful silvery mound with cascades of white flowers. Grown en masse, they create a beautiful, ethereal waterfall. 20cm. RHS H4.

Lewisia Brynhyfryd hybrids pink-flowered A pink-flowered selection from a hybrid group with flowers in shades that range from coral, through violet pink and magenta, to pale lemon and white, these drought-tolerant evergreens need protection from winter wet. 20cm. RHS H4.

Nursery owner Elea Strang, who took over Kevock Garden Plants from the Rankins in 2016.