Gravel Gardens

2023 Author: Ashton Daniels | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-11-27 17:13

"Hilly steppe overgrown with grass and flowers foreshadows joyful surprises"

(Dream interpretation. "If you dreamed of the steppe")

Whoever has seen a blooming spring steppe at least once in his life will never forget his overwhelming delight! It is impossible to breathe in the steppe air! Looking at the endless expanses of the steppe, you understand how vast and diverse Russia is.

“Oh, you are a wide steppe, Free steppe, You are wide, mother, Stretched out.”, - sung in an old Russian folk song.

And, indeed, the steppe stretched from West to East. Steppe is a zonal type of landscape with herbaceous vegetation, with closed or almost closed grass stand. The great landscape designer Nature has worked on the diversity of the steppes on Earth. People are her students. And more and more often steppe corners appear in our gardens. Some resemble meadow steppes, others - pampas, prairies or forest-steppes. There is where to roam fantasy!

The steppes are characterized by the predominance of sod grasses and drought-resistant forbs. Ornamental grasses look especially good among stones, in areas covered with coarse sand, rubble or pebbles. So, peeping at Nature, people began to create gravel gardens. In states with a developed civilization for several millennia BC, there were beautiful gardens created, sometimes in risky climatic conditions. This is an arid climate, poor soils, rocky areas.

Gravel, pebbles, pebbles belong to rounded loose rocks. They are widely used in the arrangement of various surfaces of gravel gardens. Less commonly used non-rounded rocks, such as various types and fractions of crushed stone.

The surface of the gravel garden can be made flat or dune-like. Large boulders can be used to highlight accent points. When laying stones, you need to achieve naturalness. It must seem that these stones have always been there.

If you do not like alpine slides or rockeries because of the large amount of stone used to create them, but you want an easy-to-maintain garden that is in the bright sun most of the time, then a gravel garden is the best alternative for you. But its appearance cannot be accidental, it is dictated by the architecture of the house and the style of the garden. Gravel gardens are great in natural style gardens with free landscaping.

A gravel garden can be created on any soil and inconvenience. First you need to get rid of the weeds. Then create a fertile layer of light garden soil, sand, peat, organic fertilizers.

The introduction of fine gravel (fraction 5-10 cm) stabilizes the soil, improves its structure, it becomes loose, does not compact in spring from flood waters, and quickly warms up. Gravel provides plants with ideal conditions for growth and self-seeding. In winter, gravel protects seeds well from rotting, in summer it acts as a protective mulch.

Plants should be planted in large groups evenly over the entire area of the flower garden. The garden is constantly changing as plants develop, grow and move each season, creating new groups. To maintain a well-groomed look requires the removal of unwanted plants, pruning faded shoots that have lost their decorative effect.

Interest in the use of gravel in the garden has increased these days also because it has become difficult to keep the lawn or flower garden in perfect condition. Interesting in this regard is the experience of Beatrice Shatto, the owner of a garden located in the east of Great Britain. After planting the plants, she fed and watered them once. Subsequently, interference with their growth and development was minimal. Its flower gardens are content with rainfall and natural soil fertility.

To achieve a greater decorative effect from plants, in my practice I use a one-time application of fertilizers in the spring and additional watering of plants during dry periods of summer.

It is possible to achieve that the gravel garden looks like a picturesque oasis after careful selection of plants, taking into account the environmental requirements for their growing conditions.

From plants that bloom in gravel, choose those that prefer well-drained soil.

Plants with a silvery-gray color and pubescent leaves, such as gray fescue, woolly fescue, carnations, milkweed, lavender, wormwood, sage, catnip, and rocky juniper, feel good in the sun.

Growing grasses look spectacular in the gravel. In spring, they shimmer with delicate colors from silvery-white to bluish-purple. In the summer openwork panicles soar up. Autumn colors the cereals in purple and bronze colors. Frosty grasses look mysterious in winter. And the pacifying rustle of cereals creates the illusion of lightness and freedom.

The main colors are muted tones of violet-blue, magenta, dusty bluish-blue and white. You can add splashes of yellow and pink flowers.

The assortment of plants for the gravel garden includes sedum, thyme, yarrow, physostegia, hosts, maned barley, poppies, lunaria, large-rhizome geranium, badan, milkweed, plantain, kupena, perennial asters, tansy, stonecrops.

Special attention is attracted by tall grasses and flowers, such as Chinese miscanthus, paniculata gypsophila, Japanese anemone, mullein, tall Veronica, cottonweed, monarda, goldenrod.

In gravel gardens, trees and shrubs can be used. But do not forget that their number should be small, so as not to spoil the splendor of the entire landscape.

Mix woody plants, herbs, perennials and bulbs to give your garden a semi-wild look. This is an exciting technique in modern design.

Photo by the author