Crevice Gardening and Recycled Concrete

David Trammel's picture

Here is a novel way to recycle concrete slabs, which usually are just carted off to the dump and provide a home for plants.

CREVICE GARDENS ARE THE NEW WAY TO CREATE SUSTAINABILITY IN ANY ENVIRONMENT

"A crevice garden, however, uses slabs of stone set vertically and close together. There is less expanse of growing space and virtually no soil as such. Avent’s is remarkable for its size – some 300 feet long and about six feet high – and for its material. Instead of using quarried stone, he used broken up concrete slabs from a property he was clearing for a new home. This saved hauling 70 cubic yards of material to the landfill. But once he started in 2017, he got crevice fever and in February finished the whole installation using salvaged concrete from four other sites. He estimates the concrete pieces weigh 400,000 lbs.

In the photos, the garden looked a bit industrial, and I thought I should actually see it before passing judgement. So I did, and the verdict? It’s wonderful. The concrete is clearly not natural, but its rhythms and textures are read as an abstract version of a rock formation. This is down to the design sensibilities of Avent’s collaborators, Jeremy Schmidt, the botanic garden’s supervisor of grounds and research, and rock garden designer Kenton Seth, of Fruita, Colorado."