CRAGS - Calgary Rock & Alpine Garden Society

06/23/2026

Everyone is welcome to this special plant sale held by CRAGS as part of the NARGS AGM & Conference.
Date & Time: Saturday June 27, 4pm to 5:45pm
Location: Grey Eagle Hotel, Eagle Robe Room, 3779 Grey Eagle Drive, Tsuut’ina, Alberta.
See map below.
Admission Fee: $5 cash (free if you purchased a Conference ticket)
Free parking. Bring cash for some vendors.

This is your chance to buy alpines, orchids, or native woody plants from:

Daniel Walker (CRAGS member)
Rob Staniland (CRAGS member)
Shawn Hillis (Garden Slippers Orchids https://www.gardenslippers.com/ )
Wright Nursery https://wrightnursery.ca/
Wrightman Alpines https://www.wrightmanalpines.com/

06/01/2026

A specialist nursery for water plants and others.

OPENING June 2nd 9-5 Tuesday-Saturday 15 minutes drive NW of Sundre, AB

05/30/2026

Tomorrow (Saturday May 30) CRAGS hosts our annual Plant Sale at Lakeview Community Hall, 6110- 34th Street from noon to 4pm. If the weather cooperates we will be outdoors, but if it is rainy we will hold the sale indoors at the hall. Hope to see you there!
For full information see https://crags.ca/plant-sale/

05/24/2026

Less than one week before CRAGS' annual plant sale, held at Lakeview Community Hall. Join us on Saturday May 30 from noon to 4pm to buy alpine, native, and hardy plants of all sorts. Please see https://crags.ca/plant-sale/ for details.

05/11/2026

The latest plants blooming at the Crevice and Native Plants Garden at Botanical Gardens of Silver Springs.

05/04/2026

The first two photos are Pulsatilla nuttallinana, or Prairie Crocus. Then Hepatica transylvanica, and Townsendia hookerii (another native wildflower).

05/04/2026

Reader Rock Garden is a gem that you need to visit!

He stood on his porch at the end of 1913. The garden was barely started. The city was still prairie in so many places.

But he had already planted thousands of trees. Built miles of boulevards. Filled greenhouses with flowers for hospitals. Coated playgrounds with gravel so kids didn’t have to play on dirt. He grew potatoes on St. Patrick’s Island just to give them away.

Rock by rock. Spruce by spruce. Potato by potato.

Then he wrote this line. “I intended to devote my energies for the first season, mainly to getting grass and flowers in the parks.”

That sounds gentle. It was not gentle.

He had hardpan soil. Chinook winds that could kill a lawn overnight. No money. His appropriation ran out by September. He had to let good men go. Men he could have kept working all winter. He called it his great regret.

But he kept going. He planted 19,500 flowers in one park alone. Two thousand six hundred spruce. Two thousand poplars. He hauled cinders by hand to make roads. He worried about the children’s swings breaking.

Getting grass to grow was an act of war.

And he won. You feel that win every time you visit. More than one hundred years later. He won.



Source: City of Calgary Archives, Parks and Recreation Department Annual Report 1913, W.R. Reader

📸 April 30, 2026