The perfect spots for some darker blue and green hosta or fairly thin or darker variegations. One of them filled with only blues (lighter to deeper in the middle maybe; or green to blue) could look like a pond.

Jon

You are a real fine example of the urge to garden not giving up when the going gets tough. I sure hope it exceeds your expectations. It will be different! :) And I like pushing the envelope.

Jan, way to go! Your planting pockets Will be a welcoming sight in the spring and summer for you to enjoy...here's to your gardening spirit..cheers all round!! :-)...

....ours sits on and is virtually surrounded by rock but its amazing how little a growing medium trees need to latch their roots onto...trees jut out of rocks all over the Lake. We've built a rock wall on top of the rock and the garden survives on its own, after a fashion...hosta remain small but get no attending to except what Mother Nature provides. A lot of cottagers have gardens although few are in ground...mostly potted.

Your beautification program will be a joy to the birds as well! :-)

Jo

blasting rubble piled there about 60 years ago while installing a septic system.

==>>> wow .... they blasted for the septic... crikey ...

ken

ken - back in the day, sewage was pumped directly into the St. Lawrence River. When the wisdom of that practice was questioned and the law wisened up, most dwellings along the river opted for holding tanks, but my handy-man father-in-law blasted enough to accommodate an in ground tank, and then built up a hill of sand between the cottage and the road for the weeping tile bed.. Must have been quite an operation, and 60 years later one whole side of our lot is 'wooded' with whatever would grow in the rubble - primarily lilac. The built up hill also changed the contour of a gentle slope enough that we enter our cottage on the second story rather than climbing down to ground level. Pretty unique.
Hopefully hostas will like living on rubble.
Jan

Love the idea of your planting pockets. I can feel your pain with the rocks and poor soil. We plant everything at our camp (so far) in containers or on berms (we buy topsoil by the truck load - have used 4 small truck loads so far). We are currently looking at a project where there's a cavity in the rock (they used to mine copper here) and plan to fill it with a layer of fill dirt, then top soil, then plant roughly half a dozen apple trees in it. Biggest (area wise) project so far!