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Video: How To Create Rockeries In The Garden, Plants For Rockeries
2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-16 15:57
Magic stones
There are stones magnificently majestic, like splendid monarchs, there are menacingly solemn, like strict bureaucratic people: there are whimsical, refined, like painted beauties.
Among the stones there are those like dragons and phoenixes … they seem to bend in bow or walk, spin or jump, scatter in different directions or stand in a crowd, support each other or fight each other …
Bo-Ju-I
Gardener's guide
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Rockeries and rock gardens - what's the difference?
When you want to create something unusual, classic and ultra-fashionable in your garden at the same time, or you just want to have a corner on your site that is beautiful at any time of the year, then you should think about a rockery device. These rock gardens bring with them a sense of stability and poise.
According to the Chinese teachings of Feng Shui, stones enhance the influence of Yan - a strong, light and successful beginning. Therefore, regardless of which part of the garden you place the Rock Garden, in any case, some area of your life receives energy, which means it will improve.
In landscape design, a rockery or rock garden is a composition that is very strong in terms of its effect on the viewer, therefore, its creation must be approached deliberately. You should decide for yourself for what purpose you want to acquire this composition, and, based on your goal, choose one of the options for rock gardens.
The classic rock garden is a collection of alpine plants, ranging from exotic edelweiss to the Carpathian bell, housed in a flower garden imitating a mountain landscape. Depending on the assortment of plants, caring for a rock garden can be either very simple or extremely difficult.
Other types of stone gardens are called rockeries (from the English rock - rock), and you can place a variety of plants in them.
A rock garden is always a great opportunity for creativity, because this composition allows countless variations.
Types of rockeries
Garden rockeries are conventionally divided into three types according to the method of arrangement.
The first is a classic rockery (or rock garden), where plants are planted on a small elevation, laid with stones. The advantage of the classic rockery is the ability to plant more plants than on a horizontal plane, as well as the attractiveness of its appearance, imitating a mountain landscape in miniature with ledges, cliffs, crevices and plateaus.
The second type of rockery is flat or horizontal. Its advantages include the fact that the plants planted in it suffer less from drought in summer and frost in winter than plants planted in a raised or vertical rockery.
The third type of rockeries are stone or retaining walls. This type is very decorative in appearance and in addition to this, it can serve to separate zones in a garden, i.e. to be also functional, in addition to high decorative qualities. However, any type of rockery is decorative.
In spring, the rock garden is the first to free itself from under the snow, as the stones accumulate heat. By planting early flowering bulbous plants such as snowdrops, lumbago or crocuses, the stone garden is eye-catching from early spring. The combination of fragile plants and stone is extraordinarily attractive, as they say, it takes the soul. And if you plant one or several evergreen conifers in the rockery - mountain views or elfin trees are desirable here - then not only until winter, but the rockery covered with snow will remain a decoration of your site.
Now, among the garden plants, a group is distinguished, which is usually recommended for planting in rockeries. They are united by comparative unpretentiousness, drought tolerance, resistance to burnout, compactness and short stature.
Any plant in rockery has its own functional purpose. So, creeping and ampelous species form carpets on sharp slopes, decorate defects, bows and grasses give the structure the appearance of a vertical elevation. Plants with a cushion type of growth (saxifrage) look best planted in cracks between two inclined slabs. Those with a carpet type of growth (thyme, subulate phlox) are best planted on flat open plateaus. Large specimens are placed in the background or at the foot of the slide.
When planting any plants, it is necessary to take into account their type and size in adult form, as well as their strength of growth and competitiveness, since then the stronger ones will suppress the weaker ones. All types of stonecrops are especially aggressive in this respect. These exotic and fragile-looking plants can become real dictators if they are not limited to a haircut.
Probably the most important thing, what distinguishes rockeries from an ordinary flower bed, is that although rockeries involve planting different plants together, nevertheless, here each of them can be considered separately. The alternation of plants with spike-shaped inflorescences and plants with flat flowers looks most effective.
You should strive to ensure that from early spring to late autumn flowering in rockeries does not stop. To do this, it is worth choosing species and varieties that will bloom at different times, so that they can, as it were, pass the flowering baton to each other.
Basic rules for creating rockeries
Of course, the device of a rockery is a creative business, but there are also several prerequisites.
The first is light. The ideal location for a rockery is where it gets sunshine most of the day.
The second is drainage. High humidity is categorically contraindicated, therefore, the place for rockery is chosen elevated, not flooded with melt water, and drainage is arranged on damp soils: 10-15 cm of coarse gravel or broken brick over the entire area of the future slide. Earthen mixture for rockeries should be moisture-absorbing and permeable on one side, for example, a mixture of turf and coarse sand (or turf, sand and peat 1: 1: 1).
The third indispensable condition is the complete absence of weeds: at the site of the future slide, the soil layer is removed and removed or carefully sieved from the rhizomes of weeds. Weeds that appear later are removed as soon as they are found. Without this condition, weed control in rockeries can turn into Sisyphean labor.
The basis of any rockery is stones, they set the basic tone and style of the whole composition. Rockery should be as natural as possible, so it is best to use local types of stone, homogeneous in structure, or sandstone.
River rounded stones and stone scrap with sharp edges are categorically not suitable - they look alien. Sandstone can even be used freshly broken, because it is aging rapidly. Granite boulders can be artificially aged: their surface is lubricated with a brush with a solution of food yogurt, and after a month or two, the stone is covered with lichens and moss.
Stacking is the most important part of the job, you can't cheat here. The stones should be laid as naturally as possible, in the form of a stepped slope, with cliffs, ledges and plateaus. If you can find veined stones, you can lay them so that the veins line up and form a "natural rock exit".
All laid stones are buried in the soil by a third or even half, but only so that the plants, growing, do not completely cover them. Under the largest boulders, so that they do not "drown" over time, they lay a foundation of gravel or asbestos-cement pipes. The soil mixture between the stones is poured gradually, pouring water over each portion so that voids do not form. Planting is started after complete shrinkage of the soil, two weeks later.
Most of the plants used for rockeries are perennials; annual flowers are used, as a rule, for draping faded bulbs.
In order to make it easier to compose an assortment of plants for your rock garden, you can use the proposed table, which also indicates their flowering time, which will allow you to make rockery bloom continuously from spring to autumn.
List of plants for planting in rockeries
| Height, cm | Flowering time | |
| Bows are different | 10-50 | May-July |
| Burachok | 8-20 | May |
| Rezuha | 5-30 | June July |
| Thrift | 5-10 | May June |
| Windbag | 10-15 | April May |
| Bell | 5-30 | June August |
| Carnation | 10-20 | May-July |
| Krupka | 5-10 | April May |
| Gentian | 10-40 | May-September |
| Avens | 5-20 | May June |
| Iris | 5-20 | May |
| Lavender | 10-30 | May June |
| Edelweiss | 10-40 | June August |
| Levisia | 10-25 | June July |
| Adonis | 10-20 | June |
| Phlox shil.. | 10-30 | May June |
| Bloodroot | 10-50 | June-September |
| Lumbago | 10-15 | April May |
| Thyme | 5-20 | May-August |
| Sedum | 3-30 | June-October |
| Rejuvenated | 5-50 | June August |
| Height, cm | Flowering time | |
| Periwinkle | 10-15 | May June |
| Saxifrage | 10-30 | April May |
| Smolevka | 10-15 | July August |
| Mouse hyacinth | 10-20 | April May |
| Mylnyanka | 3-30 | May June |
| Yaskolka | 5-20 | May-August |
| Adonis | 15-30 | May |
| Breaker | 5-10 | May |
| Thrift | 5-10 | May June |
| Colchicum | 10-25 | September October |
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