Five Principles of Great Rock Garden Design

There's no doubt about it at all, when it comes to great rock garden design, the first principle is to make it look real. As you look at the picture below, you're going to have difficulty deciding which rocks were placed and which were existing in the landscape when the owners built their house.

And how do you do this?

Take a look at pictures of mountains or rocky areas.

You're not going to see many sites where all the rocks are simply laying on the surface with soil between them. You're going to see rocks half buried, you're going to see mixes of really small rocks and really, really big rocks all in the same location. And you're going to find they mostly all line up in the same direction. (think big glacier going over the rocks aligning them into one direction rather than scattered)

So what we need to do then in our backyard garden designs is mimic nature as much as possible by using the largest rocks we can find, by half burying some and lining up the rocks in similar orientations.

Don't Mix Up the Rocks

Most importantly not mixing up our rocks so we have a few granite, a few limestone, some sparkly rocks and some white rocks - all the rocks in an alpine garden are going to be the same kind of rock.

Rocky, Gravelly Soil - Not the Good Stuff

Do use rocky soil between the rocks, rick soil beloved by perennial flowers has no place in the rock garden design. Think of mountain areas and how much drainage that soil has (usually very gravelly) and absolutely no fertilizer is needed for these plants (when was the last time you saw a mountain being fertilized?) :-)

No Flat and Level Garden

Do think of creating hills or at the very least mounds of soil and rock. These mounds should be serpentine and not just a pile of dirt in the middle of the yard. Again, alpine meadows or rocky areas are seldom if ever dead flat as is your backyard. If you don't have a hill, make one.

Use Alpine Plants

This last principle of good rock garden design assumes you want to grow rock garden plants. This means you're going to learn something about which plants are native to high meadows and which are native to rock cracks on mountainous crevices. Indeed, you're going to learn that some plants such as Echinacea (one of my favorites) isn't a plant that's found in these areas and it, and a hundred more like it, shouldn't be in a good rock garden design. Use appropriate plants please.

Finally

Rock gardens give gardeners a chance to strut their stuff and learn about some truly interesting plants. Some of the best gardeners I know are alpine gardeners (but who grow an amazingly large collection of non-alpine plants in other areas of their gardens as well) I have learned as much or more about general gardening by reading and studying rock gardening and rock garden design as any other form of gardening.

Welcome to the wonderful world of alpine gardening and the lessons it brings.




Yes, this is all one garden, a serious collector of interesting plants.

Shopping resources for this Page

Rock garden design and operation books

You Can Find All of Doug's Ebooks Right Here