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Building a rockery
So, you’ve just knocked down an old garden wall and you are facing quite a number of trips to the recycling centre with the old bricks and/or concrete. What do you do? Build a rockery of course! That’s not the only reason to build one of but it is a handy way of recycling your waste materials. Consider where the rockery is going to go. Will you ever need access past this area? It won’t be easy to move it once it’s installed and speaking of access, will you be able to get your rockery stones from the delivery point at the front of your property to the required position?
When deciding on a shape for your rockery try to avoid the plum pudding style pile of base material and soil with rocks placed as currants on the outside. It won’t look natural. The rockery should be built in layers with the stone placed in a natural style on each layer and the stone size should decrease as you reach higher levels.
After you have visited the garden centres and have purchased your favourite colour stone, sort out your rock in to large, medium and small sizes. Place the larger stones in position on the ground and fill the voids with the rubble and compacted soil before working on another layer. For best effect partly bury the stone under the soil. Avoid spacing the rocks to regularly and too evenly. Each layer should slightly undulate.
If you want to put your rock feature under a tree, consider the falling leaves in the autumn and the lower light levels in the summer due to the shading effect of the canopy. You will have a much smaller choice of plants here. Don’t bury the the tree trunk under soil and rocks as this can cause the bark to rot and may kill the tree.
You are going to feel pretty tired after carrying all those rocks around so don’t try to finish it all in one day. Tiredness can lead to shortcuts and a hastily finished creation probably won’t look right. You can also injure yourself when tired. Speaking of injury, ensure that all rocks are placed soundly and securely especially if you are including standing stones. Children will enjoy playing on the rocks before the plants go in and a loose or poorly laid stone could cause a serious injury.
Safe standing stones
Lightweight standing stones -
New Yorkshire rockery stone, York paving, setts, sawn Yorkstone, walling stone and roof slates are available from:
Below: rocks and cobbles in zen garden
One 25Kg bag of 60-
Below: lightweight artificial standing stones
The 2m tall standing stones below are actually lightweight GRP or glassfibre. If these fell on top of you I’m sure you would say “ouch” but you’ll survive! Even though they are lightweight, they would still have to be secured if used indoors or outdoors where there is a possibility that they may fall and (slightly) injure someone.
A trickle water feature can also be built in to these.