Planting soil

For everyday purposes we mix one third each of topsoil, peat moss and crusher fines. Large quantities in the wheel barrow. Smaller quantities in a pail, often adding extra topsoil to make it richer.

When we need lots of planting medium – like on Piz Rots – the mix gets coarser. Wherever possible we apply some weed barrier on the original ground to keep any weeding to the minimum. Time will tell how much it will help.

Ground Cover and Trees

The ground cover is planted in inter mixed groups, the trees get planted in twos, threes and fives in loose combinations in order to avoid the impression of reforestation plantings. So far we planted mostly Dwarf Alberta Spruce  (Picea Glauca var. Albertiana 'Conica') and Mugo Pine (Pinus mugo) , along with a few low growing junipers, these are hoped to represent low growing  trees – at least from some distance.

The English Garden of our predecessors featured a lot of “Snow in Summer” (Cerastium tomentosum) as ground cover. This should lend itself well do represent wild, unkempt mountain meadows. It will need to be kept in check, since it spread quite a bit.

Flowers

Edelweiss and Gentian are a must for a RhB layout, even if the scale is off. Far enough removed from the trains to avoid direct comparison provides nice colour highlights.

to be continued