Alpine Tub

Nancy had held onto the cast iron tub for years, but she didn't know what to do with it. She considered refinishing it and using it in an eventual bathroom remodel. She thought about using it outside, maybe for a fountain. But her garden and house projects kept growing and changing, and the tub just sat in the back corner of her yard.

So she gave it to me.

About ten years ago, that old beat up three-footed tub came to live with me. In my former garden, it sat in the middle of the backyard and my ex-husband would bathe Indiana-the-dog in it. I always wanted to do something more with it, but hadn't figured out what it would be yet when we decided to move. I insisted we lug it north with us a for a future garden project. It sat upside down next to the rental house, waiting for that future garden. After my ex and I split up and I bought the house in San Francisco, it moved with me up here. I had the movers set it along the edge of the property while I wondered what to do with it.

For a long time, I thought it was going to be a pond, and I spent a lot of time researching how to make an old bathtub into a pond. The longer I thought about it though, the less right that seemed for this tub in this yard. After Scott and I met, fell in love, and he moved in, we dragged it together to different parts of the property. It eventually ended up at the top, next to our upper patio. It was the right place for it, but my nextdoor neighbor teased me: "I don't want you taking a bath out there! I can see the tub now from my room!" I assured her there would be no bathing.

Last May, Scott, the kids and I went to the San Francisco Botanical Garden big spring plant sale. My stepson fell in love with the strange, matted plants in the alpine section, and I'm a sucker for all kinds of dianthus and the tight low growing ones made me grin. The kids and I oohed and aaahed over the hypertufa troughs in which the low growing plants embroidered together to make tapestries of green and silver. I was hooked. And, I figured out what I would do with the tub.

I bought bags of cactus soil and gravel, and collected a small pile of flagstone from other garden projects and pretty rocks that the kids and I had collected on camping trips. I also ordered plants through several sources, and picked up a few at a local nursery. I tried to focus on matting plants and bulbs, with the hope that eventually the surface of the tub would become blanketed with strange alpine foliage, some of which would bloom extravagently in the spring, and bulbs would poke through the thick blanket. I even chose some California native plants that seemed to fit the alpine garden requirements: low fertility, gritty soil with little summer water.

To keep the soil from spilling out of the drain and plumbing holes, I wadded them with balls of scrunched up chicken wire, then filled the tub. In the deeper end of the tub, I positioned the flagstones vertically, to make tight crevices, similar to what you might find in high places, where the earth has twisted what was once flat into mountains. I positioned the plants and bulbs where I wanted them, placed soil around them, then covered the surface with gravel and stones.

This is what the tub looks like this morning:

Here is more information of what's planted in there (with links to sources):

Campanula betulifolia This should form a bright green matt with white flowers. It is healthy, but very tiny right now.

Calochortus uniflorus "Cupido" Calochortus is a native California lily. There are many species, all of them beautiful. This selection supposedly tolerates garden conditions a little more easily than other varieties. We'll see how it does hanging out with its crew in the tub. Right now, it is hitting peak bloom, and the flowers are lovely, silky-lavender with blue stamens.

Dianthus "Tight Blue" I bought this last year at the SFBG plant sale and I don't know another source, nor do I know what the flowers will look like, though one of the two small matts looks like it will begin blooming soon. It has pleasing, very low growing blue foliage. I hope it spreads and mounds over stones.

Dichelostemma ida-maia This is another California native bulb. It is just beginning to send up flower stalks now. I may feel that it's too tall for the tub once it's up and blooming, but I couldn't resist the unusual, beautiful flowers. We'll see.

Iris reticulata "Pixie" These bloomed in February. They're quite pretty little flowers, and I had planted many of the same in other parts of the garden, too. However, they really shine in a tub like this because you can focus on them. In the rest of the garden, they're so low and small, it's hard to notice them. The flowers are only 4" above the soil line. This photo is from February 1st.

Helianthemum "St. Mary's White" I put two of these in along the edge of the tub farthest from the patio. Two will probably be too much, and I'll need to edit. If so, no worries. This is a beautiful, drought tolerant plant I wouldn't mind growing in other non-irrigated parts of the garden.

Monardella macrantha "Marian Sampson" This grows in rocky screes in California and seemed suited for an alpine tub. I hope it eventually spreads and tumbles its scarlet flowers over the edge.

Narcissus "Oxford Gold" A short, hoop-skirted narcissus, this bloomed all late winter. Here it is on February 29th.

Saxifraga "Lutea" I bought two of this variety from Wrightman Alpines, but they no longer have it listed on their site. The Saxifraga genus are incredible. Mounding, tiny foliage and spectacular flower shows. They grow directly on rocks in mountains, so Wrightman grows them on pieces of tufa and sends them, stone and all. I "planted" these by burying the bottoms of their individual stones in the tub. I took these pictures this morning, and while the flowers are mostly faded and beginning to seed, the flower branches are still so lovely and colorful.

Silene baumgarteniana I love the ballooning flowers of silenes, and this particular alpine variety looked wonderfully weird, so I had to try it. So far, it's growing well, and just about to start blooming. Here is a picture of it this morning, tucked up against Elfin thyme.

Vitaliana primuliflora v. cinerea I tucked this tiny plant in between the flagstone crevices. It has grown well, but no blossoms yet. It's another one that I hope forms a tight matt that fills in and mounds up against the stones in the tub.

Two more species form patches of the tub's quilt: Thymus serpyllum "Elfin" (pictured above) and an unknown plant, a scrubby, scappy, silvery creeper. I purchased one of the unknowns from the alpine section at the SFBG plant sale last year, and another identical one in the half-price section of a local nursery, and in both cases, they were missing their tags. So, I don't know what it is. It is, however, growing very well, spreading into firm-textured puddles of silver. Can you identify it?

The alpine tub has become a spot in my garden where I spend lots of time just looking. Since all that grows in it is miniature and the focus of the landscape so limited, every leaf is a miracle. I've read that bonsai originally began as a meditative practice, and the alpine tub helps me see how that could be true. Growing it is growing the art of noticing.