Japanese-inspired rock garden

Rock garden
Originally uploaded by mara.

I'd been looking at a rock garden plan in a book on stonescaping for a while. Finally I bought home a photocopy on Friday. When I showed it to my husband, he really liked it and said I should do it. So I thought I'd try to put it in this weekend.

Turns out it took only one day. Saturday morning, around 10:00, we left for the rock yard. It took a while to figure out the materials, especially for building the little rock sculpture meant to look like a Japanese rock lantern. The key was finding natural or salvaged stone to use as a square post. They don't have any salvage at my rock yard, but they have an amazing array of "brick rock" that has straight edges and sqared-off corners, and we found a beautiful piece of purple-tinted sandstone to use as a post.

On top of the post, two flattish, squarish pieces were needed, plus small flat pieces to use to construct "pillars." I was happy to see some weird-looking clay-based stone that not only had the right size pieces for platforms, but also little flat pieces to build columns. They call it bark rock.

After finding that, the search was on for flagstone. I wanted something of a slate look, and luckily there was a group of gray sandstone that not only had the right look but was available for hand-selecting (rather than having to take the lot).

Finding the gravel, or stone mulch, had its own dilemna -- what colors? I wanted some contrast, but I wasn't sure how much. Black and white seemed extreme, but the white stones looked great with the grayish flagstones, and the black stones were sparkly, which seemed ideal because they're supposed to symbolize water. I was getting hot and tired -- those would do. As it turns out, the black/white contrast reminds me of the yin/yang symbol, so I kind of like it. It's not as naturalistic as what's intended, though. I may end up putting some beige or gray gravel in with the white.

After that, finding the small boulders was easy. They have a great selectio of Wisconsin granite, pink, black, and white. I choose a variety of colors and sizes, keeping an eye out for rocks with veins (found a great one -- pink with a black vein).

We brought it all home in two trips, with a break for lunch. After unloading everything to my site, I scraped the top 1-2 inches off the site to remove grass and weeds, and also to lower the whole area so that the flagstones and gravel would be at ground level.

I played with the flagstone placement for a while, then determined where the post for the rock sculpture would go. Hubby dug the hole for the post and we put it in. Then we put down a layer of plastic and cut a hole for the post.

Final flagstone placement was next, then the "mountain range" of small granite boulders. (They're going to be re-arranged, I think; I'm not quite happy with them. Plus I have some small ones to add.) Then the "pool" of dark stone mulch in the middle, uniting the sculpture, boulders, and the middle flagstones. Then the light stone mulch all around. Then the top of the rock sculpture, balanced on the post.

The plan calls for mortar to put the rock lantern together, but theirs is more complex than mine -- four neat pillars rather than the two roughly stacked columns that I have. So I'd rather not mortar, if I can get away with it. However, it's very flaky, soft rock and will probably at least chip if it falls, if not break altogether. So I'm still considering mortar.

There's room on both ends for shrubs and perennials, and room on the length-ways sides for low-growing stuff like sedum or rock cress, or a nice agressive ground cover like bugleweed. (I won't be putting any plants in the rock area at all; just around the edges.) It's pretty close to being a full-sun area, especially during the few weeks before and after the summer solstice. But I'm still observing the light to see if I can get away with any part-shade plants.

I was done and out of the shower by 4:30. What a fun way to spend a Saturday, although I picked a bad day to create a full-sun garden -- it was the first day to hit 90.