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

Berkshire chapter North American Rock Garden Society

About Rick Lupp...

Speaker, November 2005  meeting.

Rick Lupp is one of the plant hunters featured in Bobby Ward's book. He first became captivated by rock and alpine plants while hiking and mountain climbing in the high elevation areas of  Washington state, including the peak called variously Takhoma, Tacoma and Tahoma. When he opened his nursery, located in the foothills of Mount Rainier, in 1986, he appropriately named it the Mount Tahoma Nursery. This small, mail-order nursery specializes in choice plants from the mountains of the US North West and is considered among the leading US alpine plant sources.

Rick goes into the mountains to gather seed ten to twelve times a year on average. Most trips are within Washington state, but he also goes to Oregon, California, Idaho and Montana and occasionally to Alaska. His great success with growing seed means that he needs to take only an infinitesimal percentage of the seed in a population. Once he has established the plants in the nursery, he is normally able to produce his own seed or propagate additional plants from cuttings. His talk will introduce us to some of his techniques and to the plants he has introduced, such as Erigeron 'Goat Rocks', Phlox diffusa 'Goat Rocks Pink', Phlox adsurgens, Penstemon davidsonii var. meniesii 'Pink' and Penstemon procerus var. tolmiei 'Hawkeye' shown right.