rock garden design advice needed

16 years ago

I have a huge maple tree that has a ring of very large rocks circling it. It was like that when we bought the house 20 years ago. Inside the ring are lilies of the valley, and some vinca and a ton of weeks, with a few daffodils that come up in the spring. Close to this maple is an old milk house from the original dairy farm that has a lilac bush, some overgrown irises a few daffs around it. My thought was to expand the rock garden around the maple to extend to the milk house somehow. I thought of turning the milk house (marble floor and stone walls) into a garden shed. (It hasn't been used since my kid 25 years ago had her fisher price kitchen in there.) I can move rocks and have an unlimited amount of dirt. I need design suggestions. I have no idea how to post the picture of the area, which would give you a better idea. Am new to the forum. I think it could be a kind of rock and cottage garden together. I will post a pic, if someone could tell me how to download from my computor. Thanks

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Comments (2)

tracyvine
16 years ago
Hi Marysy, Welcome to GW. Your plant sounds wonderful! I can't wait to see the pictures that you are uploading! I have a sunny rock garden that I inherited from the previous owners of our house and have spent the last 3 years moving things around and experimenting with what survives in hot rocky areas. This summer I finally put in a large shade garden that is approximately 20 x 30 ( or maybe a little longer). This area is also shaded by maples as well as oak and pines.

Do you have a photobucket account? If you don't then go to www.photobucket.com and sign up, it is a free picture sharing service. After you have it set up then start uploading the pictures of your Milk House and garden area.

Have two tabs open, one for your gw post and the other for your photobucket album. After the pics are uploaded then right click on the html Tag next to the photo you chose. Click on copy, switch over to the GW post and right click again in the follow up message, then click on paste. You will be able to see your picture after you click on preview. While in photobucket you are able to resize your pictures for posting. For better detail I would choose the message board size for posting to message boards.
botann
16 years ago
Here's how I arranged the rocks in my garden before planting the Alpine plants. I call it 'lumpy strings'. The rocks are on ridges and I plant the valleys with very low growing plants so as not to cover up the rocks I purchased from a quarry.
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If I had to do it all over again I would have made the ridges higher and the valleys lower.
The trees are a dwarf form of Cryptomeria pruned to look like large evergreen trees. Sorta like giant Bonsai.