02/08/2026
Dear Members
Please join us (virtually) at 6:00 on Monday, February 9th, via Zoom for a presentation by Tony Reznicek on “Mass Murder in the Rock Garden”.
Adventurous gardeners (and rock gardeners in particular) tend to push the limits of cultivation, trying to grow plants from regions with very different environments than theirs, only to fail. The southern Great Lakes region seems particularly hard on plants, so I will explore, from a botanist and gardener’s viewpoint, a number of the plants I’ve killed in the rock garden. Some of the deaths have obvious causes, like winter cold, but many are not always so easy to solve. Others are mysteries, even with evidence from repeated failures. We will look at some
of the known or plausible reasons for mortality. Though everyone’s circumstances are different, I’ll offer someapproaches that may help – for some plants at least.
TONY REZNICEK has retired from his position as an evolutionary botanist at the University of Michigan but his life-long enthusiasm for gardening continues. The late Fred Case stimulated his interest in rock gardening, and he has never looked back. Tony especially enjoys growing gentians, saxifrages, and hardy gesneriads, but he also cultivates woodland plants, especially those from China and Japan, hardy succulents,
hardy members of tropical plant families and anything else he finds of interest. He has a steep back yard and uses tufa, limestone, sandstone, and concrete in the garden.
Tony has been active in NARGS over the years. He currently serves on the nominating committee, and has been a board member in the past. He still keeps his hand in plant research, continuing to study Michigan flora,
sedges, and botanical history, and he enjoys traveling, including NARGS tours, to see plants in the wild.
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