Creating and Planting Garden Troughs

Now available in paperback, here is the authoritative guide to creating and planting wonderful garden troughs. Troughs, those elegant antique stone containers so treasured by rock and alpine gardeners, can now be made at home with hypertufa, a relatively lightweight concrete-based mixture, formed in simple molds. Like original stone, hypertufa troughs are weatherproof, last for decades if not longer, combine well with other landscape materials, and make the perfect environment for evocative miniature gardens. Each trough can have its own micro-environment with the perfect size, soil type, rocks, mulch, and siting for the deand dwarf evergreens are some of the plants that can be showcased in trough gardens. Authors Joyce Fingerut, much in demand for her trough-building workshops, and Rex Murfitt, alpine gardening authority, present specialized information on making and planting successful troughs in a most readable yet thorough manner. This book includes hundreds of photographs, clear drawings, a well-tested hypertufa method and recipe, trough-planting technique, a guide to plants, illustrated sample planting plans, and a checklist for hypertufa ingredients and supplies. The updated bibliography, plant and subject indexes, and the resource list add to the value of this classic book. Acclaimed in reviews. Recipient of the American Horticultural Society Book Award. *** Reviews Creating and Planting Garden Troughs, by Joyce Fingerut & Rex Murfitt Named a Book of the Year 2000 by the American Horticultural Society. AMERICAN GARDENING (Magazine of the American Horticultural Society): Selected as one of five Books of the Year 2000. "'This is a much needed practical guide to the construction, planting, and maintenance of hypertufa troughs, ' says Marco Polo Stufano. Written in a down-to-earth style, the book also details the history of gardening in troughs and describes a wide variety of plants that can be combined creatively in them." ROCK GARDEN QUARTERLY (Magazine of the North American Rock Garden Society), Loren Russell: "The strength of this book is Joyce Fingerut's clear and patient exposition of trough construction, greatly enhanced by the generous use of Jane Grushow's photographs of critical steps in the process. PACIFIC HORTICULTURE (Magazine of the California Horticultural Society), Richard G. Turner, Jr., Editor: "Much has been written ... on the fine art of making a garden trough. None, however, have come close to the thoroughness with which authors Fingerut and Murfitt have assembled this book on the fine art of crafting simulated stone troughs. ...The authors devote one-third of their book to a lengthy and detailed discussion of only about thirty genera of plants. But what a wonderful discourse it is, covering the natural origin of the genera, key species of interest, and specific needs for successful cultivation. ... In addition to the fabrication of troughs and the plants to fill them, the authors discuss the placement of troughs in a garden, appropriate soil mixes for different ecological groupings of plants, and care of the troughs once planted." ALPINE GARDENING ON THE NET (Alan Grainger, UK): "This work is, as the title implies, about garden troughs and NOT trough gardens. It has a most comprehensive chapter (42 pages) on the construction of hypertufa troughs covering everything from what materials to purchase, what tools to use, how to make the moulds, and how to give your trough an 'authentic' look. From my experience of trough making nothing appears to have been missed. Joyce Fingerut has excelled in her meticulous attention to detail." THE BOOKWATCH: %2

Joyce Fingerut, President-elect of the North American Rock Garden Society and a well-known lecturer on making hypertufa garden troughs. Many of her award-winning troughs have been seen at the Philadelphia flower show and other horticultural exhibitions.

Rex Murfitt, trained in England at the famous W. E. Th. Ingwersen, Birch Farm Hardy Plant Nursery with Walter Ingwersen VMH and his son Will Ingwersen VMH, building rock gardens and traveling widely. There he learned the romance and lore of alpine plants. He later served as head gardener to Constance Spry. He eventually moved to New York and started Stonecrop Nurseries with Frank and Anne Cabot. He now lives in British Columbia where he writes and lectures on rock gardening, troughs, and alpine plants.