Rock Gardens

For some unfortunate gardeners rock gardening is unavoidable due to rocky terrain or even perhaps dry areas that don't allow soil to get a grip on the landscape. For others a rock garden is another way to express their creative gardening skills through an different medium.

Rock gardens were initially popular in Great Britain but early rock gardens were though to be an eye-sore and at the time they were poorly balanced and didn't look natural.

By the turn of twentieth century however, rock gardening was popular and leaps and bounds were being made using rock gardens. Across the Atlantic and crossed to Northern America it became popular and still is to this day Todays rock gardens are much different and can add extra depth to almost any garden.

Today, garden enthusiasts looking to create their own rock garden have a myriad of choices available with two of the main types of rock gardening being Japanese gardens or your average everyday rock garden.

Like most people if you’re going for the more widespread trend of rock gardening where plants abound there are a few things to consider. By the way, Zen gardens are more sparse with plants.

If your landscape is full of rocks then you won’t have too much of a problem setting up your garden. If, however, you’re doing rock gardening for purely aesthetic reasons, then you’ll need to plan and create carefully to achieve the natural looking results you’re after.

When designing your garden, start with the problem spots. Once the problems are sorted out, you'll find that the rest will generally follow and will design itself. It's much easier to control and grow a rock garden if it's on a slope and also gets the most sunshine available.

Next, scout out the rocks that you already have in your garden, if any. There’s a good chance that you can use at least some of them and they will blend more easily into the garden. If you don’t have any, don’t worry rocks are always available to buy or even better, you can probably find some for free somewhere.

When choosing your rocks, choosing a colour scheme that looks natural and in keeping with your garden as much as possible. Keeping this colour scheme in mind when you go to buy your plants will help greatly as you can pick and choose the ones that suit you, your rock colour and also the general surroundig in the garden.Make sure that the plants you choose are the type that won’t need too much water as rock gardens are natually well drained.

Now that you’ve made your purchases you can now start your rock gardening properly.

Mix your plants in with rocks at a particular space, and angle to suit you and the garden. Make it suit you, after all you're the person who is actually doing the rock gardening.

Depending on the size of your planned project the rocks then hopefully you should be able to finish your initial journey into rock gardening within a day or two, leaving you to enjoy it and make small changes here and there for a long time to come. Enjoy!