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- Making a ROCK garden

I’ve never considered myself a particularly versatile gardener. Show me a large garden
with swathes of open beds begging to be filled with skillfully placed shrubs and
flowers and my brain refuses to engage. I am better suited to working on rockeries, or
rock gardens, from potted container rock gardens to great big sprawling rock gardens
that nearly engulf the driveway.
Alas, a Capability Brown I am not. My gardening style, especially where rock gardening is involved,
can be described as a bit of Harold Basil Christian with a healthy dose of Gordon Ramsey, Daffy
Duck and even some Mount St. Helens thrown into the mix … usually long periods of quite
contented gardening interspersed with periods of brooding intensity once an idea has germinated in
my head, followed by episodes of great activity characterized by lots of chaos and jumping around,
a bit of swearing, a few explosions and generally a result that may not be to everyone’s taste but is at
least interesting!

I’m sure you can picture it … I’m a champion procrastinator (as the Editor of this magazine knows),
and I procrastinate for ages about any new project, especially any new rock garden project. This
phase is essential, as far as I’m concerned, and usually occurs when I’m lurking behind some trees
and bushes in the garden, observing the site of the next project. It allows amorphous ideas and
desires to be galvanized into a focused direction that generally indicates hard work of some sort
in the near future. This obsessive phase usually continues until I can ‘see’ the project in a series of
mental images … something like an abstract picture manual. Usually by this stage my long-suffering
husband, dogs and staff start wondering what they’re going to be involved with now and start
making plans to head for the hills.
Much attention is given to the rock garden project and many hours are spent waxing lyrical about the
potential beauty of its successful conclusion! Succulent plants are procured, praised and evaluated

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