Czech Crevice Garden Master arrives in America! Steppe up!

A picture of ZZ I "borrowed" off a Newspaper article from a Prague newspaper (it's on the web, you can look it up)

I have an even better picture of Zdenek on a tribute I wrote a year or so ago: do click on it here and get a much fuller picture of our long and rich history. This blog is about here and now: namely--Zed Zed arrived in Denver yesterday (August 17) and will be spending OVER a month with Zdena, his wonderful companion, speaking at eight venues, culminating in the Steppe Summit (linked here again) on September 15. Be there or be square!

Zdenek "wrote the book" on crevice gardening. 50 copies of this were purchased by Ken Ray (treasurer of the Rocky Mountain Chapter) and they will be sold at the Steppe Summit and the upcoming meeting of that group on Saturday, August 25 at 1:00PM; Ntloko Bongani will be the speaker that day--on Lesotho Alpines--you should go to that meeting too!).

Dionysia 'Zdenek Zvolanek' (borrowed from an Alpine Garden Society post on the Web)

This image pretty much sums it up: a hybrid produced by the great Michael Kammerlander (formerly of Wurzburg Botanic Garden) was named for Zdenek--combining the more amenable D. tapetodes with the famously difficult D. afghanica, but retaining the latter's color. One doesn't get plants like this named after one without a pretty compelling reason. In ZZ's case it's that he has revolutionized our musty art of rock gardening and made it compelling to a whole new generation of Millennials.

(not "borrowed"--taken by me last summer: entrance to the Rock Alpine Garden D.B.G.

Here is an image I took last summer of the first ambitious crevice garden designed by Mike Kintgen at the entrance of Denver Botanic Gardens' Rock Alpine Garden inspired by Zdenek's technique.  Crevice gardening is not only aesthetically pleasing, it is engineered such that otherwise impossible plants will thrive. The Crevice Gardening school of rock gardening evolved about 50 years ago in Prague, developed by Ota Vlasak, Zdenek, Josef Halda and Vojtech Holubec among a few others--Zdenek has become its best known prophet and along with Ota the most artistically gifted of the practitioners. He's designed crevice gardens all over Europe, at Montreal Botanic Garden, all over British Columbia and notably the Mt. Goliath branch of Denver Botanic Gardens twenty years ago! The impact of his work can't be overestimated: thousands of gardeners around the world are using his techniques in their gardens: ten public gardens in Colorado and Wyoming have installed ambitious crevice gardens as a consequence of Zdenek's past visits and his influence. He will be visiting all of these in the coming weeks as he delivers 8 talks throughout the Rocky Mountain region (here is the link to those talks)

Another "borrowed" picture, this time from a Prague television station.

I could go on and on about this fellow: he's good company--and he and Zdena will be waking up soon, and we'll have breakfast. He doesn't have a clue I'm doing yet another blog about him.

He has provided me with so much knowledge, so much in the way of understanding horticulture, plants, nature (not to mention great boon times and partying a dozen or more occasions on several continents and many places over the last 40 years), I can't help but want all of my friends, and you especially to meet this giant of a man: one of the greatest horticulturists the world will ever know. He gives a damn good program! And a pretty good trumpet player too! As they say in Greek Ζήτω Ζήζι!