No question: A garden is a lot of work - especially in autumn, when the leaves on the trees turn so wonderfully colorful and fall down onto the beds. Sometimes it can be left there as winter protection, but in the rock garden you should regularly remove the old and wet leaves.

Fallen leaves are a hazard to underlying plants

Always remove leaves from rock garden plants that are sensitive to moisture

Most plants in the rock garden are very sensitive to moisture, so leaving the autumn leaves lying around is not a good idea. In particular, sensitive plants such as mountain avens or edelweiss begin to rot under the damp cover, so that the planting in your rock garden should soon be gone.

Suitable methods for removing autumn leaves

The removal of leaves that may be wet and therefore sticky, especially from smaller stones or pebbles, is no easy task. It's best not to work with a leaf blower in the rock or gravel garden: in the end, the pebbles will fly all over the place and destroy the laboriously arranged ensemble. In addition, a leaf blower not only blows away leaves and stones, but also many of the small and endangered animal species that have usually settled in a rock garden. It is therefore better to use ancient methods, such as a brushwood broom. Here willow or birch twigs are tied to a broom that easily removes all leaves.

Prevention is better than clean-up: spread a net!

Now this manual removal of leaves in larger rock gardens is quite a hassle. To avoid this, you can simply use this proven trick: Stretch a fine-meshed net over the entire area in good time before the leaves begin to fall. From there you can simply remove the collected leaves with a broom or clear them away together with the net. However, the same applies here: Collected leaves must be removed regularly.

Evergreen deciduous and coniferous trees reduce leaf fall

To make your work easier, you can of course also prevent leaf fall by planting evergreen species of wood. There are a number of suitable deciduous and coniferous trees for the rock garden, but all of them are of dwarf growth.

Suitable conifers for the rock garden:

  • Dwarf Balsam Fir
  • Dwarf Cypress
  • Dwarf columnar juniper
  • Dwarf Blue Cedar Juniper
  • porcupine spruce
  • Dwarf snakeskin jaws
  • Dwarf mountain pine
  • Dwarf Hojapine
  • dwarf boxwood

tips

For the same reasons as described above, it is not advisable to use fir or spruce brushwood in the rock garden to protect it in winter.

Category:

Garden design