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Create a rockery
• Create a scenery with pots
• Growing plants in unusual containers
• Make your potted plants more beautiful
• Choose the material of pots
• Look after your pots to make them last
• The right pot for the right plant
• Upright-growing plants in pot
• Growing a tree in a pot
• Hiding a cumbersome stump
• Hiding the compost heap
• Optimize Trees
• How to redesign a flowerbed ?
• Create a flowering border like a painter
• Harmonise foliage between them
• Succeed with your borders
• An attractive garden in winter
• Create a Mediterranean corner
• Create an exotic area
• Create a Japanese corner
• Create a green roof
• Create a rockery
• An Acer, for all gardens
Landscape a scenery with a mountain-holiday's feeling in no time at all. To start with, you will particularly need... stones!
Rocks enhance the 'green gems' which have a delicate blossom.
A Helichrysum, at home in a rockery!
Always attractive
A rockery is a border like no other. Filled with low plants which often grow forming cushions or carpets where stone plays an important role and not solely for decoration purposes. Indeed, plants of mountainous origin always need moist soil, even in summer. Their roots plunge deeply into the ground looking for that moisture. On the other hand, they hate stagnating water in winter. For that reason they must be grown higher than the ground level.
On the contrary, in wet soil a rockery offers a real advantage but the other way round: in raising the height of a flowering border held by stones, you allow plants which normally thrive in well-drained soils to grow in places where it would not normally be possible. Lavenders, Helichrysums, Campanulas and many more plants which normally thrive in not too humid soils will thrive in that environment.
A rockery can be created using other things than stones!
More than pebbles
A rockery is mostly made of stones, but not entirely. You also need soil between them to allow plants to grow and thrive. You must therefore start by building the rockery, stacking up stones, or for the part which will not be seen any mineral matter. The heart of the stones can be made of other things than natural stones in order to reduce cost and also to salvage any cumbersome, bulky rubble you might have. The plants won't see the difference, as long as there is some good soil in the gaps! On the other hand the visible stones must be selected and well chosen. Let the large ones show as they will reinforce the combination between mineral and vegetal.
In practice
Compose your mound mixing in good soil eventually mixed with potting compost, with stones, counting 2/3 of stones for 1/3 of soil. Finish in landscaping future planting pockets, that is to say stone- less places, large by at least 10cm and 20cm deep to be able to place the plants' earth ball in. Ideally, let the mound stand for a few weeks before planting, the time for it to pack down. Place the plants in situ, untangling their earth ball and spreading out their roots deeply, without damaging them. They will look for moisture in depth. Water straight after planting and maintain humidity until they recover and start growing again. Usually you must water during summer as a rockery dries out rapidly during drought's episodes.
1 Dig a hole which is deeper than large.
2 Untangle the earth ball to spread the roots in length.
3 Place the plants in situ and water.
Over time, rockery's plants colonise the entire spot.
Weeding!
If the decorative effect of a rockery is undeniable, it does however require a bit of looking after. Weeds enjoy the good living conditions on offer and you must weed your rockery. It is better to do it often and only spend a few minutes doing it rather than wait for them to grow too much as it becomes a difficult job. And, as a rockery is easily accessible it is easy to remove the unwanted young plants as and when they appear (in the spring and mostly in the autumn).
