The Crevice Gardens Along the Trail link the Demonstration Garden to the other areas that are being developed in the Durango Botanic Gardens. This crevice garden was installed in June 2016. It was designed by Kenton Seth in Grand Junction, CO. Erik Lewis and Lisa Bourey of Durango supervised much of its construction.

Crevice gardens were first developed in the Czech Republic as a way of miniaturizing a mountain or alpine landscape in people’s backyards. 

The skeleton of this garden is 27 tons of Twilight gneiss, quarried north of Durango. Look closely and you can see that the rocks are positioned in somewhat parallel arrays. This is one of the hallmarks of a crevice garden. The boulders are embedded in a mound of masonry sand, amended with expanded shale to increase moisture retention. Plants are mulched or top dressed with several sizes of gravel. The crevice garden is watered from above to mimic the summer monsoons. The garden has an array of microclimates, and plants with specific exposure or moisture needs are placed where they will do best.

Click here to see thumbnails of the plants in this garden