Rockeries

Creating Your Garden Paradise

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ROCKERIES

Like all areas of the garden, by creating different environments for plants to grow means you can extend the range of varieties needed.

Rock gardens offer the chance to grow alpines in your garden, that would normally grow on the side of hills. These areas of changing interest are coming back into fashion with the wide range of plants available in garden centres nowadays.

In the local area of Ledbury, all the way down to Monmouth and in the other direction towards Malvern and parts of Worcester, it is quite commonplace for these ranges of hilly ground to spread into people’s gardens.

A straightforward rock garden is one without water; obviously water is another thing that can be added in to create movement through a rock garden, but can be quite complex to build into the rockery. Therefore we are just looking at rockeries themselves.

Stones

The type of stone used is particularly important. Ideally, when picking rocks, a granite stone and not a porous stone would be preferable. This will prevent them shattering during the frosts/winters and ensure that the rocks look as good as when they first went in.

Rockery Options

There are two options for building a rockery: either build it into an existing slope, or create/construct a mound with the rocks built into it. Either option is suitable, but the selected plants would change.

If you are building into an existing bank, the bank might already be wet. If you are creating a mound then this area would tend to be drier. Therefore choosing the correct plants would be essential to fit into those areas.

Choosing your Rocks

The best thing to do is to choose a random selection of rocks. If they are all the same size then this looks rather unnatural. If they can be layered to resemble a natural rock face, this would create the desired result.

Placing the rocks in a crescent shape, starting at the bottom and digging into the bank, will create pockets for planting.

Choosing your Plants

Choosing your plants is obviously very critical because you want plants that will flow over the edge and slowly cover some of the rocks to make it look natural. Something to bear in mind when placing your plants is that you might want to use some of the stones as stepping stones through your planting in order to maintain and weed the area.

Strata of the Rocks

The strata lines and the shapes of the rocks are very important. By getting a cluster of three, i.e. two lower ones and one onto the next level gives you the area, but you ideally want them to look like they have fallen and have settled to naturally pro-trude from the soil.

So the strata lines - the lines of soil or settlement materials that have formed over billions of years, creating the ridges or layering in the rocks - getting these to flow in the right direction will make it more pleasing to the eye. Once you have put the rocks in, I recommend digging in compost or putting a layer of compost in before planting.

Again choosing your plants carefully is hugely important and adding horticultural grit over the whole area would help to keep it down and the weeds under control.

Weeding

Weeding is highly important, ensuring unwanted weeds such as cooch grass don’t get a firm hold. Once they root underneath the stones it then becomes a real issue. So spraying the area first or making sure it is weed free before you start is a must, otherwise you are creating more work in an area that should be reasonably low maintenance.