Hello John,

That's a big question to answer. There is a dedicated Alpine and Rock Garden forum which is part of Gardenweb.

A Google search of the phrase "rock garden" brings up quite a bit of information about the subject. You could find a lot the answers to your questions on those websites.

- Audric

As a Professional I was hoping that you could help me with some of these questions, just as the types of rocks to use types of plants to use? I hate to take away from your time.

There are more than one way to skin a cat (my cat is giving me a dirty look as Iwrite this).

You can do an alpine perennial garden, a Japanese or Chinese style garden, or even something uniique.

My opinion is that you should try to stick to similar rocks, meaning that a light quartzite will not usually go well with basalt or dark weathered granite. The reason is that as a visual element stone is very powerful at unifying a composition. Varying the type of stone takes away from that unity and can become a powerful force in fragmenting a composition.

That strong unity is so powerful that it allows the designer to do all kinds of crazy things that he otherwise could not get away with. It gives license to use all kinds of color and contrasting texture and form without losing unity.

Variety in shape and size is more often a plus than a minus. Bigger rocks are more powerful and therefore more unifying than smaller rocks.

In nature a rock will not often remain very long in a position where it is not at rest.Our subconscience has read this over and over and will recognize when a rock is not at rest and it becomes uncomfortable. My father used to tell me that every rock has an a$$ (or more than one) that it wants to sit on and it won't be comfortable until it is sitting on it. That does not mean every rock has to lie down flat, but it does mean that whatever position it is in, it must look comfortable.

That is a start.

PS. Nothing is more unique than my spelling of "unique" at the top of this post.

Take away the rocks and you have a mess.

Take away the rocks and you'd never get that much variety in size, color, form, texture, and depth in a 6' wide bed.

I agree that rocks can be a unifying feature in the garden.
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They can also be distracting. Note the brown rocks in this project.
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And here is my rock garden

Our rock garden came about because it was the easiest way to deal with a hill full of rocks. You can fight it or work with what nature hands you. I think it's one of the high points of our landscaping now. Our property is gently hilly and not only does this help to give plants a place to hold on for dear life, it makes natural ampitheatres where they are displayed to their most potential.

It's not a cop out to tell you that you might want to check out the alpine and rock garden forum. Professional or not, don't discount the advice of a layman rock garden nerd.

What did we plant in our rockery? We started out with backbones of trees and shrubs, added a lot of native perennials and use bulbs and vines. It is very dependent on the look one wishes to achieve. The up part of a rock garden on a hillside is the excellent drainage we get in our clay soils. It lets us get away with a lot of plantings we couldn't on flat ground.