Well, it’s Sunday afternoon and only raining intermittently, so I’m going to try to build a rockery. Problem is, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do. Here’s what I have:
Flat square of garden where a shed used to be.
Pile of rocks.
What do I do next? I know I need to build it on soil, but I don’t know where to get some. Do garden centres sell soil? Or is it possible just to use compost? Could I just transfer my compost heap to the rockery bed, and put rocks all over it? Or should I buy a huge bag of peat moss compost? What plants should I put in it? Do I have to plant as I go, or can I plant between the rocks later?
Another thing to consider is that your local library may have books about building rockeries. You should go to the library and see. If they do, then you should take the book home and read it. Then you could build your rockery following the instructions from the book you got out of the library.
That’s what I would do, but I’m not much of a handyman.
Be careful you don’t go into the mountaineering section by mistake, you would have to spend far longer than a weekend building a rockery as pictured in the books you’d find there.
A book would be a good idea. You need to know what plants you want to grow before you add soil - some plants like acidic soil, some plants like alkaline soil. As long as you are starting from scratch it would be a lot easier to use soil acceptable for the plants you want to grow than try and change the PH later.
I have been doing a bit of looking online, jjimm, and found this article on the BBC website. Just two pages, but seems to have good basic information for you.
And one tip that I remember from building a rockery years back: Weed like you’ve never weeded before. Make sure that the soil is weed free before you actually do any planting, because they are a bugger to yank out once they have their roots nicely tucked under a rock or two.
If you do get weeds growing once the rockery is established (grass is a real git for doing it), get yersen one of those mini flamethrower things to help. You’ll never be able to pull grass out and it beats hacking away with a pissy little trowel for hours on end.
Kal - who has a… erm… wildlife garden. Yeah, that’s it. Conservation is my middle name. Ahem.
if your garden is sunny, and you have a small, sjeltered, sunny spot available, I can give you a sunflower.
I’m growing one on my windowsill at the moment, and it’s coming along nicely.
Problem is, I don’t think I’ll be staying in my own place long enough to take care of it properly, and I don’t want to plant it in the garden and then abandon it when i move.
So give me a shout if you’d like it (it’ll take another cuppla months before it’s ready to go outside, though)…
if you get some peaty soil, you can plant some nice heathers. They do very well in Irish weather (as if i need to tell you) and require very little maintenance.
I think the important thing is to make sure the rockery drains well, at the bottom. So use lots of gravel to start with, then a layer of loose rocks, maybe then soil, and then a few rocks on top?
The books all say that you should take pains to make the rockery look like a natural outcrop, in a smallish, flat suburban garden, this really isn’t very often possible.
There are, though, two things you can avoid doing:
–The Dog’s Grave: a long oval or oblong mound with a few large stones, one of them conspicuously upright
–The Currant Bun - a circular mound haphazardly dotted with stones.
If your rock has any conspicuous strata, then you should try to align them all in parallel planes, it will look better if you have a few groups of rocks stacked or arranged close together - you can plant into the gaps in between.
Alternatively, if they are suitable, you could use your rocks to make a circular dry stone wall retaining a raised bed - you would still be able to plant into the cracks and it might look a bit more ‘honest’ than a fake rock outcrop.
The rocks that I’ve got (don’t be fooled by them, BTW - I am in fact still jjimmy from the block) are rather nice - they seem to be igneous, like granite, except beige. They’re about yea big, and there’s about 30 of them which just about cover the flat area. I have a feeling the currant bun might indeed be the thing I’m going to end up with.
Seems that before I do anything I’ve got to get some bloody soil. “Once you have the soil, all else follows”, as Lao Tze said, when he was building a rockery. Probably.
Are they igneous sedimentary or metamorphic? Or concrete?
Do you want the rockery to be low or high maintenance - no contest here.
What way does the garden face, is it shaded.
One tip I got a while ago was to take a walk around your neighbourhood and see the sort of plants that grow best there - and steal them for your own rockery.
If you’re going for an alpine type garden, just make a big pile of rocks and fill the gaps between them with a mixture of peat and sand, or sand and clay. and plant your aplines in that. You can make the initial pile with rubble and bricks, concrete etc and put a layer of "nice"looking rocks on the top. This is a great way to get rid of the wife, or the remains of a shed.
If you’re trying to make a big flowerbed, with decorative rocks, you’ll need a lot of clay and peat etc.
Either way wait for a sunny day otherwise, you’ll see all your hard work washed away.
