Still Planting in November

Well, there are still a number of plants that should have found their way into a better place for the winter, but I've done just about all the planting I can. Last weekend I filled up my two most recent troughs, turning these:

Into this:
close up here:

featuring Phlox subulata, Silene acaulis 'Mt Snowdon', and some other stuff I can't remember at the moment.

It also turned into this:

I really really like the way this large trough came out. It's big enough that I think the dwarf conifer that's in there will be able to thrive - and it's height adds a bit of drama that is missing from most of my troughs. The boulder in the middle was a perfect specimen I pulled from the woods. It had nice fractures breaking it into four pieces, but they were still intact and adjacent. Each section of the rock is also covered with lichen, which immediately adds an air of age to the planting. And I was able to use the crevices between the rock sections to plant two species of Draba - an ideal environment for them. The gravel mulch is sifted from the stream behind the house, so it matches the native bedrock quite nicely.

Here is a closer view of this trough:

The plants growing in the boulder crevices are Draba rigida (lower left) and Draba cretica (upper right). The other plants include (clockwise from the upper left corner) a dwarf Alberta Spruce (Picea glauca 'Jean's Dilly'), One I can't remember, Euonymous japonica 'Rokujo', Armeria 'Victor Reiter', and Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Sternkissen'.

Now all I need is about fifteen more troughs, and none of my plants will have to live in pots and on benches and in sand beds.

Next gardening task is more leaf removal and sifting some more gravel to top off a few of the troughs who need it.