Alpine Garden Society
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| Abbreviation | AGS |
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| Formation | 10 December 1929 |
| Type | Registered charity |
| Purpose | To promote the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns and small shrubs |
| Headquarters | Pershore, Worcestershire |
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Region served
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United Kingdom; significant numbers of international members |
| Website | http://www.alpinegardensociety.net |
The Alpine Garden Society is a society based in the United Kingdom, with its headquarters at Pershore, Worcestershire. It describes itself as an "International Society for the cultivation, conservation and exploration of alpine and rock garden plants, small hardy herbaceous plants, hardy and half-hardy bulbs, hardy ferns and small shrubs".
It publishes a quarterly journal, now titled The Alpine Gardener : Journal of the Alpine Garden Society. Many alpine plants are easy to grow. This makes "alpine gardening" a good introduction to plants for those who are short of the space and/or time to devote to gardening on a larger scale. The Alpine Gardener contains well written articles for those with less experience or time, although of course the majority of the content is targeted at the more dedicated enthusiast. These latter can still be enjoyed for their enthusiasm and the very high standard of photography that is maintained by the AGS.
Providing a pragmatic definition of an Alpine plant, in the context of the AGS, is a little difficult. Strictly speaking, an Alpine is a plant that occurs in the region above the tree line and below permanent snow in mountainous regions. Within temperate and boreal regions, the alpine zone can be subdivided into three zones, each with characteristic vegetation types: Lower alpine, with bush and tall herb communities; Middle alpine, in which sedges, grasses and heath species dominate; and, Upper alpine, with dwarf herbaceous, prostrate woody plants, lichens and mosses. The zonation in tropical and sub-tropical mountains differs significantly and the plants of these zones tend to fall without the domain of interest of AGS members.
This provides plenty of scope for growing plants of diverse size and form. However, species of many of the genera of interest can be found at lower altitudes too. For example, many bulbous plants (or more strictly, geophytes) flower as snow recedes (or as rain begins to fall on the cool down towards snow-falls in the autumn). The timing of this, of course, varies with altitude, and as a result attractive and garden-worthy examples can be found from mountain foothills right up to the upper alpine zones. So we see the alpine enthusiast growing a wide range of the three "Cs" - Crocus, Colchicum, Cyclamen - in order to provide colour and interest through autumn, winter and spring. And so the interest continues to grow, with many plants that are well-suited to the alpine or rock garden having their origins from way outside the alpine zones of the world.
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Wikipedia