I did the same thing last summer. I started out with big rocks from the woods behind my yard and then progressed to rocks in wooded areas around the town I live in. I was a mess all summer...bruises, scratches, etc. Some of the rocks were heavier than me! I was lifting them and putting them in the back of my car then driving them home and unloading them. Eventually my back did recover and now I am happy with my rock garden.

I think nearly everyone has gone through something similar. I think the best thing is think (a lot) before you do. If you deal with angular rocks, you can often place them so they look one big rock. I have a friend that sometimes works with stone weighing a thousand pounds. He does it all himself and works with pulleys and levers. It's a marvelous thing.

We go out to the nearby Rockies and gather up the 'perfect' lichen-covered rocks. Except the 'perfect' rock is too often the one 200 yards up the side of a slope...I can push or roll it down to flatish ground and then turn it end over end to the road...then take out a couple of 2 by 4's to use as skids to wiggle it up into the back of the Jeep. Get it home...go through similar convoluted procedures. One down, fifty more to go....three down ... UGH!!

I was planrting a new kirengeshoma in my shade garden this morning, and clunk! hit a rock. It was a really nice big one, and almost immediately adjacent, another huge rock.

Made for a nice ponder -- for two years I've been cussing this rocky soil, and now that I'm building a rock garden, I'm delighted to find the big 'uns! (I still hate the little 3-inchers, though)

Pat

I purchased the rock at a quarry and had it delivered and dumped above the rock garden. I used a heavy piece of channel steel to slide the rocks down into place. I used two bars and a helper for final placement.

I saved myself a lot of work by having them delivered and they all came from the same place so the rock garden isn't a hodgepodge of different kinds of rocks. Sixteen tons for $300 is a small price to pay for that.

I had to chuckle when I read the heading to this post. I know exactly how you feel. This spring my husband and I started our first real rock garden. We don't have any rock on our property that we can use. You are lucky that you have rock so close to your garden spot. We climbed in our pickup and went out in search of the perfect rocks for our garden. We worked together to lift the larger rocks into the truck. When we got home we would back the truck up to the garden and roll the larger rocks out onto the dirt where we thought they should go. The largest rocks in the garden are about 3' or so on the face and maybe 12 to 24 inchs in depth. We placed these rocks so they look like boulders buried in the garden.
There were many times during the construction of this garden when I stopped and wondered to myself if this was all worth it. My husband swore he'd never help me with another garden like this infact. Well, now that it's done. It turns out this is his favorite garden in the whole yard so we will be starting a second one shortly.

A rich person, perhaps a kind one, asked a servant if they could duplicate the look of a section of mountainside or cliffside. The gardener, servant, laborer, having pride and strength, said they could. Wealthy and idle visitors admired it and so the custom spread. Like so many from the old times or the victorian era, we try to create and keep these labor intensive things, like lawns and gravel walks.
Most of us do not have servants, so we wind up doing the drudgery, or we buy every imaginable expensive machine to save labor. I set my little rock garden up years ago, and occasionally, although the eye gets jaded, I think how nice it looks. Mostly, I pull weeds by hand. All the construction work was intensive, but basically, a one time thing. Did anyone really want a serious opinion? Its nice to know there are people who will work so hard to get a little beauty into their lives. I hope you are well rewarded.

hmmm.. around here we start with the rocks and haul in the soil. EP

around here is a little joke
why were the irish not bathered by black flies? they were to busy to pick up rocks. I have been using rocks from my stonewalls to use as borders around my plantings and I will work on a rockgarden in a spot that has to much natural rock in it to do anything else with it. I know all about the hauling, I did it with a wheelbarrow but I saw a pic how to pick them up with a lever and a dolly so i will get the huge ones that way. can"t wait to start with that new project
Ulli

Here is a link that might be useful: my garden

I did the same thing last year! I spent the whole summer bruised, scratched up and covered with poison ivy. I too thought I would use only rocks from my property back in the woods. I drove my Isuzu Trooper into the woods and spent days picking up rocks and then driving them to the right spot. Some of them I would later decide I didn't like and I'd have to return them to the woods. Then I started driving around the town I live in looking for "the perfect rock". I would be with my kids, going somewhere and I'd jump out and pick up rocks from places along the road where no person should go...up hills, down hills, etc. My kids stopped traveling with me. Anyway, my garden is "done" but it's still missing something. I wish I could figure out how to post pictures!

One nice thing about "having rocks and bringing in the soil" is that every time you dig, you have enough rocks to make a new raised bed...at least that's what I think about for the two days after I have a new bed, while laying in my bed in pain...

Happy digging,
-S

I have to laugh...I have the added insult of paying to lug them around, and having to correct the clay soil(but it's hard to find plants that do well in solid brick) My original idea was to replace the labor intensive lawn with ground cover , then I got some rocks after I put in a small pond, then it just got a life of its own.I always say I'll finish this thing right around the day before I drop dead from exhaustion !

I don't want to sound like a braggart, but my neighbor (3 doors up the hill) owns a property with a GIANT cut of SLATE rock!!! This year I put in about 200 yards of slate around my garden. I built 2 new beds with the free slate. Like I said, don't want to brag, but my neighbor let me take about 10,000.00 worth of slate for my yard. Some pieces were about 4 feet long and 1/2" thick...after about 5 wheelbarrows full of these big rocks, she cut me off of the big ones, but I can still have as many smaller ones as I need...

Luckily I got all of the pathing done before the big axe...

:) -S

Maybe I'm not as ambitious as some of you (I haven't tried moving any rocks the size of a Volkswagen), but I use a dolly to move rocks.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rock Gardens

Someone I know uses a engine hoist to collect large rocks. I havn't been able to watch him do it but if you collect from a levelish area it could work.

We use a set of hand trucks, like you move appliances with. Then roll them up a ramp onto the trailer. Still back breaking work, but my son loves me anyway!!! He says he'll never marry a women who likes rocks.....

My son has a 4 wheeler with a winch on it. We plan to park it on the back of my pick up, chock the wheels and skid large rock onto a flatbed trailer hooked to the truck using a sheet of plywood to protect the ramp. I'll let you know if it works. In the military we called that field expedience. Jim

I thought that was what grandsons were for? Mine came to visit and had a ball gathering and placing rocks for me. Course they weren't the HUGE ones, but the 13 yr old got to drive the tractor.... Both painted "memory rocks" after that to put in the rock garden....

Jackie

Marjorie Willison, our favourite Nova Scotia garden lady - she does a phone-in show on CBC radio - says anybody who lugs rocks for their garden has rocks in their head. I guess I have rocks in mine. I like how they anchor the landscape.

Here are some pictures I find inspiring (or exhausting, depending on my physical condition), posted by a lady over in the Garden Art forum - beautiful work she and her husband have done. You can link to other pictures of their project.

Here is a link that might be useful: rock garden and copper dome