Rock Garden Rivers

The best rock gardens have an ebb and flow with pools of delicately flowered and leafed plants running like rivers around rocks and rambling like waterfalls over ridges of land.  The key to building an attractive rock garden is making it look natural in its setting, like the alpine slopes to which many rock garden plants are native.  If you don't have a slope in your yard, make a stone retaining wall and slope the earth up and away from it, adding rocks and boulders to the slope and planting around them.  Use rocks of similar origin and turn them in the same direction to make a natural looking outcropping.   Plant with alpine perennials and dwarf conifers and shrubs, which will draw attention to the bed but not hide the rocks.

Alpine perennials are native to high elevations and do not grow over six inches in height.  Some are mounding like the Bellflowers, Campanula carpatica, while others gleefully sprawl over rocks and fill bare ground, such as Creeping Baby's Breath (Gypsophila repens), Evening Primroses (Oenothera spp), and  ground-covering Veronica.  No rock garden is complete without the Sedum family of succulent-foliaged, brightly colored red or yellow flowers or without Hens and Chicks (Sempervivum spp), fleshy leafed rosettes, sometimes red-tinged or with white hairy webs.
Dwarf shrubs, such as those in the holly family (Ilex spp) or dwarf conifers like the mounding evergreen Japanese Garden Juniper (Juniperus procumbens "Nana") or upright Dwarf Alberta Spruce (Picea glauca var albertiana) contrast with all the ground hugging plants provide foils for the color of the flowering plants, stay in scale with the small herbaceous alpines, and create focal points in  the garden.

Most alpines like dry, rocky soil, so a sloping area will keep them well-drained and a mulch layer of small shards will keep their leaves away from moisture, which may cause fungi to develop.  Make inconspicuous water dams and use bark mulch around the dwarf conifers which require more moisture.  Finally, be sure to tuck your favorite little elf or animal into the nooks and crannies to surprise and delight passersby.

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Drought Updates

We have
Rain Barrels!

60 Gal size - $119.00
80 Gal size - $139.00