rossafini
Chillin' In The Garden
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Are rock gardens good? If so... How do you make one?
rock gardens?
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beefy
Deeply Rooted
i find rock gardens very attractive. a lot of people here use rocks as mulch around their house b/c they dont decompose and also b/c roaches and termites, etc dont find rocks as appealing to live in as they do mulch or straw. i plan to use rock around my house at some point if i can ever afford to spend money on rocks, lol. also i use rocks in large parts.
here, i would get rid of any weeds/grass by tilling or spraying. then i would lay something down like either that plastic (which i dont really like to use b/c plants grow into it) or newspaper (wet it as you go and it wont blow away as much) or something and then put the rocks on top of that and then go back and plant plants thru it. the only thing about rocks gardens is its kind of a pain when you want to plant or dig something up b/c you have to remove the rocks to dig and if they are just on dirt you will be digging rocks out of dirt all the time. of course if your plants are already there you can just put rocks around them..
here, i would get rid of any weeds/grass by tilling or spraying. then i would lay something down like either that plastic (which i dont really like to use b/c plants grow into it) or newspaper (wet it as you go and it wont blow away as much) or something and then put the rocks on top of that and then go back and plant plants thru it. the only thing about rocks gardens is its kind of a pain when you want to plant or dig something up b/c you have to remove the rocks to dig and if they are just on dirt you will be digging rocks out of dirt all the time. of course if your plants are already there you can just put rocks around them..
patandchickens
Deeply Rooted
Are you talking about a rock garden in the traditional sense ("artistically" arranged football-to-boulder-sized rocks on a well-drained base, in some sort of hill-like or sloping setting, with alpine type plants among them) or are you talking about just plants-planted-among-gravel as beefy describes?
The following pertains only to the former:
1) A rock garden will be an intractible weed farm if you do not start with absolutely weed-free seed-free soil (that includes being free of grass roots). Otherwise the weeds' roots will hide under your rocks and boulders and you will never be able to really get rid of them.
2) It needs to be pretty well-drained, and thus it will need periodic (possibly frequent, depending on your situation and your choice of plants) watering.
3) The hardest part IMO is to get the rocks arranged so that they look vaguely natural and attractive. This is relatively seldom achieved, if you ask me
Two things that will really help are a) use only one type of rock, not a mixture, and b) set them so that it looks like the majority of each rock is underground (only the 'tip of the iceberg' sticking up) as they would normally occur in nature. This can be expensive and cumbersome if you use round boulders. But attention to making the rock pile look quasi-natural makes a HUGE difference in the appearance of the finished garden. Take a week or more, poking and adjusting at it, til you are really really satisfied before you put in the first plant.
4) Avoid plants that will take over, such as snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum), because of issue #1 with the difficulty of removing the roots of anything once it gets established.
They're more work than a 'regular' flowerbed, and if you have to buy your rocks and fill gravel and such they are also more expense. And in my limited experience (but it matches what I hear from people who have much more rock gardening experience) they are also a bit more work/aggravation to maintain. However, in the right situation, well designed, they can be really attractive. And certainly there are a bunch of plants that grow better (or only) in rock-garden conditions.
If you meant something else, just ignore all the above
Pat
The following pertains only to the former:
1) A rock garden will be an intractible weed farm if you do not start with absolutely weed-free seed-free soil (that includes being free of grass roots). Otherwise the weeds' roots will hide under your rocks and boulders and you will never be able to really get rid of them.
2) It needs to be pretty well-drained, and thus it will need periodic (possibly frequent, depending on your situation and your choice of plants) watering.
3) The hardest part IMO is to get the rocks arranged so that they look vaguely natural and attractive. This is relatively seldom achieved, if you ask me
Two things that will really help are a) use only one type of rock, not a mixture, and b) set them so that it looks like the majority of each rock is underground (only the 'tip of the iceberg' sticking up) as they would normally occur in nature. This can be expensive and cumbersome if you use round boulders. But attention to making the rock pile look quasi-natural makes a HUGE difference in the appearance of the finished garden. Take a week or more, poking and adjusting at it, til you are really really satisfied before you put in the first plant.4) Avoid plants that will take over, such as snow-in-summer (Cerastium tomentosum), because of issue #1 with the difficulty of removing the roots of anything once it gets established.
They're more work than a 'regular' flowerbed, and if you have to buy your rocks and fill gravel and such they are also more expense. And in my limited experience (but it matches what I hear from people who have much more rock gardening experience) they are also a bit more work/aggravation to maintain. However, in the right situation, well designed, they can be really attractive. And certainly there are a bunch of plants that grow better (or only) in rock-garden conditions.
If you meant something else, just ignore all the above
Pat
Tomatoes&Things
Chillin' In The Garden
I know that is is not a rock garden but if you have a shady place with some larger rocks in the area and you plant pink impatients between the rocks it brighting's the place up a lot.
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rossafini
Chillin' In The Garden
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thanks pat, but i'm interested in a simple rocks with plants growing between them.
thank's anyways
thank's anyways
Tomatoes&Things
Chillin' In The Garden
Sorry, I meant to say "I know this is not a rock garden." Not, "I know that is not a rock garden"
These are what I have on the front of my house (that one needs to be cleaned up for spring) and in my yard (that one isnt done yet, ran out of plastic and mulch)
The only bad thing is that I do occasionally find a garter snake sunning. I made the one in front of the house because its easy to take care of and my son would pull out flowers. All the larger stones came from the fields or a pile next to a neighbors field. The smaller ones I bought in bags at Lowes.
I put a layer of plack plastic underneath to fight weeds.
The only bad thing is that I do occasionally find a garter snake sunning. I made the one in front of the house because its easy to take care of and my son would pull out flowers. All the larger stones came from the fields or a pile next to a neighbors field. The smaller ones I bought in bags at Lowes.
I put a layer of plack plastic underneath to fight weeds.
beefy
Deeply Rooted
one thing i dont like about rock gardens is moving around them.
Rosalind
Deeply Rooted
As it so happens, I am working on a rock garden for next year (or maybe the year after, depending on budget). My yard conveniently came with many large granite boulders already on it 
So a rock garden it shall be.
The weeds, by and large, have all been killed because every homeowner for the past couple of decades just raked all the leaves over the boulders every fall. There are a lot of leaves to rake. It was a big pile. There are some persistent blackberries around, but I could live with them if they were trained to a fence or something. We'll see. I planted a couple of pawpaws so far. We are planning to excavate a pond around the boulders, plant a Japanese maple and some sort of evergreen thing, install a koi pond. There will probably be one of those stone Asian lantern thingies involved. Since this will all be opposite my orchard fence, I was also going to train some cherry trees as fans, if there will be enough sun to do that--there are already some beech and fir trees around that area, it could be too shady for cherry blossoms.
Basically, it's very expensive to go get your very own artistic boulders and have them trucked in. If you have some naturally occurring, you can work around them. But you have to commit to it looking nasty for about a year, swathed in mulch and landscaping fabric to kill weeds.
So a rock garden it shall be. The weeds, by and large, have all been killed because every homeowner for the past couple of decades just raked all the leaves over the boulders every fall. There are a lot of leaves to rake. It was a big pile. There are some persistent blackberries around, but I could live with them if they were trained to a fence or something. We'll see. I planted a couple of pawpaws so far. We are planning to excavate a pond around the boulders, plant a Japanese maple and some sort of evergreen thing, install a koi pond. There will probably be one of those stone Asian lantern thingies involved. Since this will all be opposite my orchard fence, I was also going to train some cherry trees as fans, if there will be enough sun to do that--there are already some beech and fir trees around that area, it could be too shady for cherry blossoms.
Basically, it's very expensive to go get your very own artistic boulders and have them trucked in. If you have some naturally occurring, you can work around them. But you have to commit to it looking nasty for about a year, swathed in mulch and landscaping fabric to kill weeds.
