ROCK OF AGES

60º East: A Garden Between Continents at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021

After falling out of favour as fussy and old-fashioned, rock gardens have officially made a comeback. Elly West takes a closer look at the carefully planned naturalistic spaces that create a thriving home for beautiful alpine plants and wildlife

I’m fully on-board with the notion that rockeries are making a comeback. After all, gardening is about harnessing and bringing order to nature, cultivating a space and making it our own. Gardens based on the natural landscape, with rocks, waterfalls and outcrops, have become a common theme at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, proving that the modern rock garden doesn’t have to be a pile of stones set haphazardly into a mound of soil, planted with old-fashioned conifers and heathers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy for these to stay in the latter half of the last century where they belong.

However, carefully planned as a naturalistic space providing habitats for wildlife and somewhere to showcase beautiful alpine plants, and you have a winning combination. I also have a natural affinity for a little bit of order in a garden, so a rockery with spaces and pockets, nooks and crannies, to tuck individual specimens appeals to my love of compartmentalisation.

The idea of a rock garden has been around for centuries if we look to the Far East, with Japanese zen gardens using rocks to symbolise mountains or islands, and raked gravel to represent water, creating a place for quiet reflection and calm. However, the popularity of more colourful rockeries as we know them dates back to the late nineteenth century, when collectors brought alpine plants to the UK and wanted a way to showcase their findings. The Victorians also created shady rockeries exclusively for ferns, known as ferneries (funnily enough), appealing to the love of collections during those times.

The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew has one of the oldest and largest rock gardens in the world. I spent many years living in west London with Kew just down the road, and the rock garden was always a highlight on my many visits, offering drama and structure with something to look at all year round. Originally built in 1882, it’s over an acre in size and includes waterfalls and a large, stone, grotto-type bridge.

Privately owned Friar Park in Henley-on-Thames, former home of The Beatles’ George Harrison, has a large alpine rock garden dating back to 1896, complete with a scale model of the Matterhorn, tin mountain goats and a mini-Swiss chalet. While the Victorians were creating rockeries on this grander scale, inevitably the ideas filtered down to our suburban gardens, with rockeries becoming a common feature in the 1960s and 1970s, before falling out of favour as fussy and old fashioned. Until now!

Rock gardens can be incredibly versatile and suit many different styles of gardening. In a shady spot under trees, rocks can provide places for ferns and moss to grow, creating the effect of a mini woodland dell. Rocks and boulders are also well-suited to Mediterranean-style gravel gardens, where they will sit happily amongst lavender, olive trees and spiky architectural plants. Many herbs thrive in the dry conditions of a rock garden, such as creeping thyme, sage, chives, lavender and rosemary. Coastal-type planting such as low growing pink thrift (Armeria maritima), sea lavender (Limoniums latifolium), small grasses and sea kale, will also work well.

Plants typically found in rockeries are tough-growing perennials

that don’t need much maintenance, well adapted to cope with hostile conditions and drought, making them perfect for lowmaintenance gardeners. Succulents such as houseleeks hold water in their fleshy leaves and need little soil for their roots, so can be tucked into crevices in rocks where other plants might struggle.

Alpines tend to be small and low-growing, and so are ideal for smaller gardens where space is at a premium. There are plenty to choose from, including primulas, saxifrage, pulsatilla, sedums, campanulas and dianthus. Now is the perfect time to start building a modern rock garden, big or small. Plants will have a chance to establish through the summer before the enemy – winter wet – sinks in. Take some time planning your space and choose a free-draining site that gets plenty of sun if you want to grow traditional alpine-type plants. Use local stone where possible as it will fit with your surroundings and the carbon footprint will be lower. Try one of the local quarries around Bristol and Bath, have a look on Gumtree, or see if your neighbours have any going spare, especially if they are having some building work done.

Try to find a mix of stones of varying sizes for a more natural look. Larger rocks should be used at the bottom, and then you can build up your rock garden in tiers, backfilled with topsoil. Alternatively, an existing dry stone wall or rocky area of the garden may provide missed opportunities for planting if you can infill spaces with soil and squeeze in some small plants.

Top dress bare soil with grit or fine gravel to help drainage around the crowns of the plants. Water is also a great addition to a rock garden, especially if you can create a cascading waterfall, with a simple sump and pump to circulate the water around. n

• ellyswellies.co.uk

Project of the month: make an alpine trough

If you fancy having a go on a smaller scale, why not create a mini rock garden in a container such as an old ceramic sink, stone trough or tin bath. Choose an open and sunny spot, preferably somewhere visible such as on a wall, so you can admire the small, often jewel like plants close at hand. Drainage is key, so make sure your container has plenty of holes in the base and use a soil based compost mixed with equal parts coarse grit. A layer of crocks in the base of the container will also help improve the drainage.

Once you’ve added the soil, arrange a few rocks to suit the scale, then fill it with plants such as sedums, sempervivums and small bulbs. Top dress with grit or some other decorative aggregate to help conserve water in the soil, suppress weeds, and also to make the whole display more attractive. Remember to water during dry weather, particularly in the first season while the plants get established.