I'm jealous! Wish we had a supplier near us. To grow in tufa rock, don a pair of safety glasses(Please!!!) and chip out planting holes. Fill these with soil and plant with succulents or any drought resistant perennial. Also, they make wonderful bonsai containers. Just remember that the rock is porous and drains, dries out quickly. Many years I found a fairly flat piece of tufa which we chipped out into a large birdbath, coating the bath part with several coats of poly urethane until it held water. I use it as an on-the-ground birdbath and it is by far the most used one by the birds.

Thanks, Nandina. What a neat idea! I hadn't thought about using it for anything other than planting or perhaps an interesting addition into my future waterfall/pond idea or a fountain. I thought it might be neat to experiment with it and see if the water would "seep" through various parts of the rock instead of just running over it. However, the tufa will probably erode too quickly. But, your idea of polyurethane makes sense. It is mid-range in price @ .31/lb. (range for boulder rock is .18 - .45/lb.) Not totally out of range for "experimenting".

My thought on "seeding" them was that, similar to a "Chia pet" or whatever those things are called, you could make a paste of flour and water and perennial seeds and start it now to be "planted" in the bed come spring. Just wondering if anyone had tried anything similar. After reading your post, I think I have my answer, though. If it dries out quickly, it would have to have soil so that the roots would have
something to retain the moisture and nutrients (unless it had a source of constant water. Hmmmm....)

I realized after I posted that I might have peeved some of the hypertufa people by saying "real" tufa. My apologies if I did. My background is visual presentation and I have made several projects out of hypertufa and I really enjoy it. I love the hypertufa forum and all the wonderful projects people have done. Such inspiration. This request, however, is strictly about the natural tufa rock. I think it is so neat and would like to have several "naturalized" pieces on my beds. For anyone interested, I am posting the link to tufa in Canada or do a search for "tufa".

How about more ideas?

Here is a link that might be useful: Rocky Mountain Tufa and Royal Slate

That's okay, luv2grow...us 'tufaheads have really thick skin (or maybe it's cement and peat moss clogging our pores). ;-)

Deb

luv2gro,
Actually, most people drill holes in the tufa using an electric drill. If you have purchased potted alpines, it is then easy to knock the plant from the pot and basically stuff it in the resulting hole. (You'd probably have to remove some of the grit/soil mix from the base of the "plug" first, as the holes really shouldn't be excessively deep or large). If you are growing from seed, chances are you'd be starting the seeds in pots, so the procedure would be pretty much the same. Although many alpines need very sharp drainage, they do need some actual substrate to put their roots into, so the "chia" seed idea probably wouldn't work too well.
I see that you are in Alberta, so if you find this sort of thing to be of interest, it may be worth looking into joining CRAGS (Calgary Rock and Alpine Garden Society) for some good, local information, courses and advice.