Habitat: stony places
Soil: gritty
Height: 5 cm
Flowering: spring
Width: 15 cm
Some of the brightest and best early colour in the rock garden, or in troughs or pots in a greenhouse, comes from the many species and hybrid alpine saxifrages. Most make tight buns of small rosettes, and in late winter produce their flowers, in shades of red and pink, yellow and white, on longish stems or short stems or no stems at all.
Saxifraga 'Burgel' is a really beautiful plant that originated in the Czech Republic, one of the x poluanglica hybrids. It has very tight cushions, and covers itself with the very bright, strong pink flowers every year. It is named after the Czech saxifrage hybridiser Jan Bürgel.|
| Saxifraga 'Elizabeth Sinclair' is a neat plant, with soft yellow flowers on red stems, one of the best of the early-flowering varieties. | |
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| Saxifraga 'Haagii'' has flower stems that are tall relative to the neat mound of foliage rosettes, and has up to about ten bright yellow flowers on each stem. | |
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| Saxifraga 'Lohmuelleri' produces tight mats of foliage; in early spring, short upright stems bear pale yellow flowers. | |
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| Saxifraga 'Mary Golds' is a hybrid of poluniniana and wendelboi, celebrating a great amateur Himalayan plant hunter an a great botanist. This is a compact plant, made up of tight rosettes, sending up short stems, each carrying a single flower, pure white when fully open, but with a pink flush when first open, this colour strongly evident in the unopened buds. | |
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| Saxifraga 'Your Song' is one of a group of reliable hybrids produced in the Czech Republic, and it should really go under the name of Saxifraga 'Tvuj Pisen'. It makes a neat dome of small green rosettes, and has lots of bright pink flowers, rather paler when open than when in bud. |