Garden Design

Common in alpine gardens, the purple saxifrage (Saxifraga oppositifolia) is a small flowering plant that has been discovered growing in record-setting grueling conditions, including the arctic tundra of the Swiss Alps, which is one of highest (and coldest) altitudes in the world.

Rambling over the desert steppe and into our romantic visions of the American West, the iconic tumbleweed is the Clint Eastwood of plants—an itinerant survivor that seems to thrive on solitude, parched land, and a mean wind. 

A desert plant, the Welwitschia mirabilis is beloved among botanists who seek the very old and the very strange. It's a living fossil that survives in the desert, neither a typical succulent or a cactus, and neither a shrub nor a bush. It has been named a dwarf tree, and a director of the Royal Botanic Gardens once described it as "the most wonderful plant ever brought to this country, and the very ugliest."

The loneliest tree in the world was a solitary acacia in a remote land. It was the only tree in a 400 kilometer radius. Standing alone in the vast Saharan expanse, l'Arbre du Ténéré (the Tree of Ténéré), was modest in size—three meters tall—but its mere survival was both remarkable, and invaluable to desert travelers.