Garden Magazines > Magazine articles by our members
A Dried up Riverbed
Palustris:
Then came the problem of deciding what we were actually going to make with these rocks. Most of them were less than a foot by a foot by a foot. There were 5 or 6 bigger ones and a lot of much smaller ones, down to gravel size. Since they were glacially deposited they are of very mixed origin which makes creating a conventional 'Rock garden' a little difficult.
We discussed various options with one or three 'experts' and the best suggestion was made by Vic Aspland. He thought that the material looked rather like the sort of rocks on found at the top of a beach. That is what we set out to re-create.
After clearing off the top soil we discovered that, as is often the case in this garden, the subsoil was a nice mixture of coal cinders and brick rubble. It does make building alpine areas so much easier when one does not have to spend hours digging drainage material in.
The first action then was to make a barrier between the new feature and the garden area behind it. Since it was intended to look like a beach and we had some lengths of logs I made my version of a groyne
Palustris:
Then we began trying to place the rocks. This was much harder to do than we had anticipated.
Palustris:
No matter how we tried, it always ended up looking like a conventional rock garden. So after a few head scratchings and rock moving around and cups of tea, finally we changed the design a little to making a dried up riverbed. We placed the largest rocks first.
Palustris:
You need to imagine the water flowing from the top right of the picture, down to the path, through various little channels. You need a good imagination though!
Now it was just a question of adding the rest of the material.
Palustris:
Since this was to have been a beach scene we had bought a load of ballast to use as filler. This is a mixture of 25 mm gravel and sharp sand. I also added equal quantities of 12 mm. shingle (rounded gravel) to it. This mixture was spread over the area between the rocks. The sand is a rather bright colour, but it was all that was available. It is river sand so it does not contain any lime.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version