This is quite an important post in regards to the whole future design of the garden. If you remember in the Best Laid Plans post I had ambitions to bring in an arbour to place under the tree and cover the back of the garden with plum slate. Well, that all begins to change today.
That mountain of topsoil that I was using to flatten my front garden hadn't really gone down as much as I had hoped. In fact, I had barely made a dent in it. This again brought up the paradox of me wanting to get rid of it, but not wanting to spend money to get it done. It's amazing how the obvious solution is sometimes the easiest ...I just didn't spend any money at all and decided to keep the great Mount Mudmore!!
Over the winter the original giant blocks of turf and clay soil had broken down and become a very malleable lump of fertile soil. Which made me think that if it is possible to plant into this mountain it might actually look quite good... better yet, if I can get some rocks from my new home Brighton I could build a natural looking rockery... right?? Obviously there was no way in hell I was gonna get enough rocks from Brighton to complete a rockery but it would be nice to have a little piece of Brighton in my old London home. I carved out a few steps in the soil to see how I could potentially structure this rockery. I even put a couple of big rocks we already had in the garden there to somehow solidify the concept in my head.
It was clear I was gonna need a lot more research into how rockeries are built, or even what they generally look like. All I knew was that I loved that idea as it saved me precious dollar and would give my garden a much needed focal point.
[ GARDENING TIP ] When it comes to planning a rockery this isn't the best way in order to construct it. You should really have a solid (possibly drawn up) plan of the area and how you want it to look when finished. Then you will need to get the rocks you are going to use and begin to lay them out as naturally looking as you can get it. Build with the largest rocks first, the smaller ones next and then fill with your compost in between the gaps. This will allow you to plant all your alpines or evergreen plants in the gaps, with great water drainage for those plants that don't like their feet wet. There are many ways for a rockery to look, or various kinds of plants you can choose to use, but always have a plan in mind before you begin anything as it isn't the easiest structure to remove afterwards.
Tree stump of the overgrown bush at the back of the garden
