I'd be interested in seeing an update-- being very interested in less
formally constructed 'rock' gardens: I have dug up the old overgrown (with
grass and native forbs and shrubs, not rock garden plants) rockgarden from
my teen years and now I have a big 'pile' (actually spread out flat so i can
see each stone, more or less) of the very mixed type, more or less rounded
stones ranging from pebble to barely movable by hand size gathered years ago
from fields on the farm, plus the native soil ('grey wooded' sort of clayey)
to work with..
I will probably try to get some sort of gravel in, but not stones, for this
bed at least; I'm thinking of something more or less moundy with stones for
support, elevation and design, but visually more like a glacier dumped pile
than crevice style..
Cohan
West Central Alberta, Canada, Zone 2-3
record temps from 10-20 miles away: min -45C/-49F;max 34C/93F
http://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:22 AM, penstemon <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> >Perhaps they thought your efforts at growing rocks would eventually be
> successful and they didn't want to embarrass you in your lack of visible
> rocks. It isn't nice to point out people's difficulties. Maybe you had
> merely sown pebbles, or grains of sand and they expected, in time, for those
> to grow to rock size.
>
> I never thought of that. Another excuse to add to the list.
> It was an enormous pile of pea gravel. There are several raised beds here
> with purchased rocks (sorry, I mean stone, of course), and one with
> "indigenous" rocks. I wanted another rock garden, but didn't want any more
> indigenous rocks, and didn't want to buy any more. My motto being "aut
> Caesar aut nihil", I decided on no rocks and to start a movement favoring
> proletarian rock gardens rather than the elitist ones hat use imported stone
> and fancy designs.
> http://nargs.org/smf/index.php?topic=312.0 That's what it looked like. I
> then ordered some sandy loam topsoil and piled that on top. I mixed the
> topsoil (devoid of earthworms) with the pea gravel, sort of, and then tried
> to conceal the overall ugliness with plants, and mulched with gravel the
> next size up from pea gravel.
> In order to stave off the sort of spontaneous criticism that seems to erupt
> in certain people, I simply asked them, "Isn't that the ugliest piece of
> crap you've ever seen?", whereupon they would say things like, "Well, uh,
> not really, though ....I don't know.......it does need a certain
> something...."
> "Like what? Bourgeois elitist stone?"
> "Yes. Perhaps one or two pieces artfully laid here and there..."
> Artfully, well, that's the problem, but I guess they're right.
>
>
> Bob Nold
> Denver, Colorado, USA
>
>
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