Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => General Forum => Topic started by: mark smyth on September 17, 2009, 03:51:42 PM
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The local granny club has asked me to show about 15 minutes of rockeries and alpines.
Does anyone have a photo of a typical rockery that could be seen anywhere in UK - black plastic covered in bark/soil and a few rocks set here and there with heathers or ....?
I'm also looking for a good photo of mountains - blue sky, towering grey rocks and scree
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OH MY GOD!!! Is that how they do it over there???
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No Carlo, that is a description of a five star rockery ;D
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Any excuse to post a few pictures. Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?
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Martin, you CAN promise me that these views are NOT from the back of the Holday Inn, Stratford on Avon, can't you? :-X :-\
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No Maggie, it's the front ;D
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Yikes!
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Thanks Martinr
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They seem to have forgotten the plants Martin, or are they just at the planting out stage?
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You'd think they'd clean up the mess they left at the bottom of the rockery! ::)
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Mark Here are a few plants to go with Martins mountains,Different place though
around Gridelwald Switzerland,The last two an alpine scree and a crevace garden.
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Gentiana acaulis
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Gentiana verna
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G verna (I hope)
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garden scree
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crevace garden,(sorry made a bog of this)
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Mark, if you want to use any of my pictures to project I can e-mail you some higher defintion versions once I've scaled the dizzy heights of the Stratford Via Ferrata with Maggi following of course!
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nice scree, tony..
this reminds me, are there any good threads anyone can recommend on scree/general rock garden construction? i haven't tried searching yet, just thought there might be some favourite moments..
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Martinr that size is OK
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Great pics Tony and good to see them on this forum. I thought you might be getting ready for hibernation down there in the midlands.
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Don't know if these are any use Mark. The setting is El Torcal north of Malaga and all the plants obviously enjoy it.
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Thanks Cohan and Shelagh,not hibernating just trying to find something to give you and Brian a challenge in October in the foliage class.
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No competition from us at Loughborough Tony we shall be rocking with the SRGC at Falkirk. Now Ponteland may be a different matter. ;D
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Thanks for the photos everyone. No-one seen any rockeries? I was out looking on Friday and saw nothing.
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Take a look at Luc's pics on the Front Yard thread-stunning!
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I now have a photo of a 20 year old rockery but could do with a much younger one
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Not much rock there Mark... ;)
Have you followed David's hint ? If you'd like to use one or more pix of mine, just let me know. ;)
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Thanks Luc but what I need is what Mr and Mrs Joe Public would call a rockery - black plastic held down with stones, covered in bark or stones and planted with small trees and heathers.
The 'rockery' I showed above used to have stones, heather and small conifers
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You surely don't think any of us are going to admit to having one of those!
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Mark, the most common local interpretation of a "rock garden" is a mound of soil with random rocks cast about on it (sometimes even painted various colours!) and planted with petunias... Really.
Along the same lines (but involving not-inconsiderable expenditure!), there is a front yard "tufa garden" nearby that is quite an amazing sight. If I can get up the nerve, I'll take and post a photo of it. :o
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Mark, the most common local interpretation of a "rock garden" is a mound of soil with random rocks cast about on it (sometimes even painted various colours!) and planted with petunias... Really.
Along the same lines (but involving not-inconsiderable expenditure!), there is a front yard "tufa garden" nearby that is quite an amazing sight. If I can get up the nerve, I'll take and post a photo of it. :o
i had to laugh at this--especially the 'painted various colours' i think i have seen that, but mercifully blocked any specific memory..i do have clearly in mind a couple of places-one in toronto, one in the town where i work now, with small front yards with rocks instead of lawn, nothing naturalistic, and not mounded, but more interesting than lawn! in both cases, petunias, unfortunately, are the planting of choice :( why not portulaca, delosperma, mesembryanthemums, gazanias etc etc? all just as available as petunias....
as for mark's idea of black plastic and shrubs--not surprising in itself, but interesting its called a rockery;
in the countryside here, most common would be a similar mound of soil and stone as lori describes, but overgrown with grass and weeds ;) currently digging out one of those i built in my teen years, though mine had more stones, and was planted with sempervivum and natives (a few of which survived a couple decades of neglect after i left home)!
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Lori that would do me. I need a photo by Thursday
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You will never guess what I saw today ;) I was out with a friend going to local garden centres to advise her on small bulbs. On they way home she stopped at her ministers house. He had just had a rockery made and I was brought to see it. It consists of woven plastic on the soil, small shrubs through holes, bark and granite rocks. I didnt have my camera with me. I'm going back on Friday.
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A prayer answered Mark ;D
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Mark,probably made by someone just out of horticultural college,and with a lot of certificates to prove it.
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or a handyman from the church
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You will never guess what I saw today ;) I was out with a friend going to local garden centres to advise her on small bulbs. On they way home she stopped at her ministers house. He had just had a rockery made and I was brought to see it. It consists of woven plastic on the soil, small shrubs through holes, bark and granite rocks. I didnt have my camera with me. I'm going back on Friday.
i'm quite curious to see the pictures..all sounds quite foreign ;)
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very stupid looking to a gardeners eye. The garden is about 2 miles 3km away. Maybe I should go for a speed walk but it's all up hill
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now stupid looking plantings--thats not foreign at all...lol i'm constantly shaking my head at the things people do--not so much when its a matter of taste, because my taste is irrelevant in someone else's garden, just the poor uses of various plants...
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An ordinary persons rockery
Looking left and right
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Beautiful Mark, I love the planting, and the stones match nicely. :) :) :) :) Do you know if that design is exclusive to the person who did the job.? ;D ;D ;D ;D
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Yes it's his design and trade mark of using two different stones - granite and basalt
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An ordinary persons rockery
Ordinary or not, it's more rock garden than I have :-[ :-[ :-[ ;D
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Ashley you don't need a big area to create a rockery. Look at these three in my garden
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Very nice Mark, and I really like how the lichen is beginning to establish too 8)
Yes I'll start experimenting with some sink gardens in sunnier areas.
Thanks for the inspiration.
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No problem. I read that lichens grow 1mm a year. Mine after 5 years must be on steroids. The stone is liscannor
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Is it correct that lichens grow best in areas where the air is very pure, i.e. no pollutants? If so we must be very pure ( ;D) because our tile roof is covered with them. Roger wants to clean it but I'm not in favour as A, it looks nice and B, I think the lichens filter out dust and other rubbish when the rain falls, and the occasional dead thing which would otherwise go into our water tank. I know that adds body to the drinking water but.....
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They are nice looking. Travellers, putting on English accents, come round here all the time asking to jet wash drives and rooves
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Lesley,
That is the usual story.... the one problem I have with that is that one of the major roads (to the main shopping centre in the town centre) in my part of Canberra has trees down the centre of it which are covered in lichen. There is no way that with that many cars going by every day on each side of the median strip (even if it is quite wide) it could be in any way classified as "pure air" of "good quality" and such. It makes me doubt somewhat the old statements about lichen indicating good air. ::)
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Mark,
Your little rockeries are inspiring. I'm tempted to try to build something small like that (although in the garden, not in a trough) except I have no idea where I'd get that irregular flat stone. I guess I could go for the paving stone stuff, but I would be concerned it would look too regular. Yours look brilliant!! :o
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Good to read people like the troughs. A few things have died and need replaced. There are bulbs in them also - Crocus, small Galanthus, Ranunculus ficaria and Colchicums.
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Paul a good crevice garden CAN be made with paving stones and doesn't look too regular if the spaces between the slabs are varied somewhat. A few centimetres for one space then a few more or less for the next space etc. and once the plants are in and growing, the rock is partially covered anyway.
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Regarding the lichens, it may be more a question of what surface the spores settle on and the general dampness in the air over time. A plastic netting fence near me (windbreak cloth) is covered in lichens yet rock in the same garden has none at all and that particular rock is the local bluestone which is harsh and unattractive in the garden though it made, 100+ years ago, a great building material. But it NEVER "weathers."
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Not sure its limestone but here isn a pic from our Takitimu Range in Soutland looking toward Fiordland