"It's a passion," he concedes. "It's very intense."
Raden is a rock gardener, a connoisseur of the group of tiny plants known as alpines. The first alpines were, in fact, natives of the Alps, carried home by 19th-century English gardeners, but the term has since been extended to cover a variety of diminutive plants, including annuals, perennials, ground cover, ferns, orchids and even dwarf conifers.
"Usually they're small and minute because they're growing somewhere where the climate makes them that way," Raden says.
This is not the kind of gardening you fall into by picking up a packet of tomato seeds on impulse at the supermarket one day. Raden's involvement began 25 years ago, inspired by his friendship with an accomplished rock gardener named Doretta Klaber.
"She was my mentor," he says. "She took me in hand and led me down the garden path, so to speak."
Ten years ago, Raden moved to the property he calls Alpineflora, about a mile away from his former home in Chester Springs.
Now his home shares 2.5 acres of land with six special mounds called hummocks. Each one has a base of crushed granite, which is covered with subsoil, topsoil, sand and gravel. They vary in height from three to eight feet; the largest is 110 feet long and 110 feet wide.
The hummocks are designed and placed so that variations in exposure to the sun and prevailing breezes produce "microclimates" that are suited for different plants. Three hummocks are planted in conifers; one is devoted to succulents, and the others contain alpine and sub-alpine plants.
