How to make a rocker with your own hands? This issue is of interest to many owners of the suburban area. The concept of such an element of landscape design, as a rocker, is its name. In translation from English rock - rock, and rockery in landscape architecture is a garden of stones. Armed with minimal knowledge, great desire and a free piece of land, you can create a rockery with your own hands, making from a boring and unpretentious plot a beautiful garden.
The rockery is an imitation of a stony plain, so place it on a flat dry place, avoiding large hills and hills. The stone garden should not be too big, it should be harmonious.
The main idea of such a landscape solution is stones, their beauty, unusual shapes, color and location.
The most truly man-made rockarium - a composition of stones and plants, will look if the most authenticly recreated corner of the wild nature, typical for this area.
With the arrangement of rockery on the slope, coniferous fir, juniper, and thui look good.
In this article, read:
- 1 Create a rockary with our own hands
- 2 Soil preparation and drainage works
- 3 Selection of suitable plants
- 4 A simple rocker with your own hands. Video
- 5 The rockeries are small and big
Create a rockary with your own hands
For the device at home rokary need to go through several stages on the way to the cherished goal.
Choosing the right site:
- Looks great rockery near lawns, large trees, hills.
- The area allocated for the stone garden should be dense. This is not suitable loose soil or sandy soil, the stones will sink in them, violating the created composition.
- It is necessary to avoid raw places when designing such a structure. Dampness will lead to the growth of mosses and mildew on the stones, which is more typical of the shady area.
- The rockery is afraid of dampness, but is not afraid of shadows. There is the concept of "shadow rocker". If there are no problems with high humidity, then you can safely place it in a shaded place, for example, spreading trees.
- Shadow rockery - this is the same rockery known to us, but with a small feature. For him, pick up plants that have a shade to their liking.
- It is not recommended to do it in close proximity to the house or other structures and along the fences.
- The main task is to make it fit organically into the overall view of the whole territory. He does not have to be an eye opener, but, on the contrary, should be an interesting addition to the overall picture.
Decorate rockeries the simplest forms of stone sculptures, geometric forms - gabions.
In Japanese rockeries, natural stones, stone rivers and bridges predominate. Shrubs and soft plants only supplement the natural beauty of stone silence.
Soil preparation and drainage works
In the allotted place, everything is thoroughly digged, we choose weeds and large roots. After that, if necessary, drainage is done. It promotes the removal of excess moisture, not allowing it to accumulate and promote the growth of grasses, mosses and mold.
For drainage, a foundation ditch depth of 150-200 mm is excavated. A base of broken brick (preferably red) or gravel mixed with coarse-grained sand is created, it will give stiffness and porosity. All this is placed on the bottom of the excavation and rammed, in parallel spilling with water so that the soil and drainage settle and fill all the air pockets. If it is decided to use very large stones, at this stage it is necessary to take care of the creation of cushions of concrete in the places where they will be located, as the usual gravel pouring and ramping will not help.
When the drainage works are finished, we cover it with the removed soil or soil mixture from sand and soil in proportion 2 to 1, respectively.
Selection of stones.
In rockery suitable for a variety of stones. The best are old, hewn by nature and time, of any breed, an unusual bizarre shape and color.
It is necessary to select stones of different sizes. Make an emphasis on several huge and further complement the picture with those that are smaller, and all open areas between large stones and plants are covered with small gravel. There are not many stones for the arrangement of rock stone, and you need to buy a large number of them, and if something eventually remains, then it will quickly find a place.
If the territory already has a stone, it can be paved paths, a lined foundation or the walls of the house completely laid out from it. Then you should choose a stone of the same breed with a similar texture and coloring, so that the new landscape solution blends seamlessly into the overall look of the estate.
It is not recommended to take too bright colors in rockery, as they will distract attention from the general picture, but if this is your design idea, please.
When choosing a stone, consider how it lies in nature. On the basis of this, it is possible to draw up diagrams for the arrangement of stones in rockeries. For example, when choosing limestone, you need to lay it in small ridges. If it's granite, then rocks are formed from it or stacked by separate boulders. And the shales are layered. Adhering to these observations, the stone garden will look natural.
Plants for rockeries.
58
Selection of suitable plants
The first thing to do is to draw up a scheme for planting plants. Indicate where and near where they will be located. Take ground cover plants, bulbous flowers and stunted or dwarf trees and shrubs, all fit well, who have a slow growth. Do not use creeping plants and do not recommend taking those that quickly discard the leaves. From the stone, too, it depends which plants will live next door, and which ones do not. Some species of rock make the soil acidic, and some alkalize it.
It should be remembered that the low growing plants in the vast majority do not really like the shadow. Therefore, they should be located on sunny, well-lit areas, of course, if it is not a shadow rocker.
Arrangement of a stone garden. If all the previous stages are completed, the plot is ready, you can proceed with the device of the long-awaited rockery. According to the layout of the prepared plot, we lay large and medium-sized stones on the prepared plot. If "concrete pillows" were made, we put boulders on them. From above lay a layer of soil, so that stones by 1/3 were immersed in it, and carefully tamped everything.
Plants used by landscape designers to create rockeries.
The area is covered with geotextiles, making slits for the stones. It will not allow the growth of weeds, and small stones will eventually mix with the soil. In places where the planting of ground cover plants is planned, it is not planked. In other places we cut and plant the remaining plants. All open places are covered with small gravel, crumbs or pebbles, so as to hide the geotextile. The thickness of such a mound is about 20 mm. The rocker himself is ready!
A simple rocker with your own hands. Video
The rockeries are small and big
38
39
40
