B.N.A.R.G.S.

Berkshire chapter North American Rock Garden Society

About Elisabeth Zander...

Chapter Chair 2004
Speaker - July 2007 (tentative) & August  2004  meetings.

Elisabeth Zander (Harmon) began the double program with depictions of her 2003 tour through the Dolomites. These magnificent limestone crags are not only the home to glacier (on Marmolada 3342m) but also wild and fantastic plants. Focus is Physoplexis comosa, the devil's claw, its poppy, sax, gentian , etc. allies. See the hardscaping this unique campanula finds necessary to it's enjoyment and good health. Decide for yourself why snails have not eaten it to extinction there.

Next we journeyed to Praha, city of world class rock gardeners such as Zdenek Zvolanak, Vojtech Holubec and Milan Halida. Western US and Turkish plants are grown to perfection in both private and public gardens. The Prague Botanical Garden features an outstanding collection of acantholimons cascading down the hill. In a nearby village, we find huge mats of physoplexis grown in a trough in a gem of a private rock garden. Then, for the afternoon program, back home to Goshen. See what happens when an obsessed seed grower meets a stone mason with a tractor.

Elisabeth Zander became the Chair of the BARGS chapter in Octobr 2004. She was editor of the BNARGS Newsletter for many years and has again taken up the challenge. She also ran the NARGS Seed Exchange with the Berkshire and Connecticut chapters from 1994-96. Commencing the 2004 season, she has resumed as NARGS Seed Exchange Director. Weekdays she programs databases at Forecast International, a leading provider of aerospace and defense market intelligence services. Elisabeth gardens with her husband Rod in Goshen. While the town has no resemblance to Corvara in Alta Badia, it is the highest town in Connecticut and full of rocks, some dolomitic.