A Rock Garden Is A Unique Landscape Feature
Mr. Andrew Caxton
A rock garden is a beautiful, restful place, and requires no
maintenance - no water or mowing or feeding. Some gardens are
meant to be spiritual, others are spiritual only in their
beauty.
It's time to break out of the everyday landscaping design. What
does your lawn consist of? Lots of green grass - that takes a
lot of time to mow and a lot of water to look healthy, trees
and shrubs. Perhaps some flowerbeds flanking the house itself.
But there's so much more you can do with your landscaping, if
you just decide to do things a bit differently.
In desert locations, of course, like Arizona and Mexico, why
bother to try to force grass to grow at all? Why not simply
cover your yard with attractive, ornamental rock and stone,
with a few shrubs. Or as the joke has it, "I'm retired, I've
mowed my last lawn!" The reason is simple - you may think water
is a renewable resource - but it doesn't renew as fast as
mankind is consuming it. In desert states where water comes
from below ground aquifers, the level of this fresh-water
source is lowering every year, and rainwater cannot replenish
that level fast enough.
Even if you don't live in a desert climate, there's no reason
why you can't make a rock garden - either large or small - in
part of your yard. Such a garden will cut down on the time
needed to mow your lawn, there'll be no need to spread
pesticides around, and it will be a quiet and restful place
around which to sit.
Like any other landscaping element, a rock garden does have to
be planned carefully. Rock doesn't absorb water - so any rain
run-off will go straight into your lawn and does need to be
carefully drained off. Don't put your rock garden over
electrical or phone lines, either.
You may think that a rock garden is equivalent to a Japanese
garden, but that isn't necessarily the case. The Japanese
garden combines three elements: stone which represents
mountains or islands, water - representing purity, and plants.
A Zen garden is what most people think of when they hear the
term Japanese garden - a stretch of white sand with black rocks
placed strategically about, and one meditates by raking the sand
smooth.
There are two ways to install a rock garden...one would be to
make the rock look like a natural outcropping of
http://bedrock...used to cut off an inconvenient slope. The
more usual design is to pile up the stones - both large and
small - in harmonious groupings...and if you simply must have
greenery, leave small gaps between the rocks into which the
plants may be placed.
Surf the web to get ideas for how to design your rock garden,
and venture far and wide, into sites from Japan and India as
well as the United States. You'll find beauty everywhere.
About The Author: Andrew Caxton is the consultant for
http://www.lawn-mowers-and-garden-tractors.com . For additional
information on gardening design have a look at his web
http://www.lawn-mowers-and-garden-tractors.com/landscaping.html
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