Rock gardens require little work, since hardly any weeds grow on them and only a little watering is required. They look modern and elegant. In the following you will find out how to create a stone bed step by step that will hardly cause you any work and will last for years. You will also receive ideas for designing with stones and plants.
Easy-care solitary plants dominate in the stone bed
Plan the stone bed
Before you start work, you should plan the stone bed to be designed. To do this, first measure it and sketch it roughly on a piece of paper. Then it's time to do the research: look at pebbles and plants for stone beds on the Internet or in the garden center and make a choice. Consider it:
- The stone bed lives on solitary plants. Plant only a few effective plants.
- Plan bed borders or borders of the individual plants with larger stones.
- Choose different colored gravel to create beautiful patterns.
The plant selection
Rock gardens are mostly planted with grasses and shrubs. These do little work, get along with little water and are hardy and often winter green. Think about how high you want your grasses or shrubs to grow and combine different growth heights as you wish. A selection of the most beautiful, hardy plants for your stone bed can be found here.
A stone bed can also flower! If you would like to create a flowering stone bed, choose flowering, drought-tolerant cushion plants or flowering shrubs such as rhododendrons.
Laying out a stone bed correctly, step by step
To create a bed with stones you will need:
- a spade
- a rake
- lots of pebbles
- Boulders for demarcations
- plant
- weed fleece
- possibly compost
- possibly sand
- mulch
1. Prepare the ground
Professional gardeners would dig and level the soil about 10cm deep before planting and then apply the soil mixed with sand and possibly with compost. This takes a lot of work and is not absolutely necessary.
It is enough if you dig the holes for the plants and work up the soil here according to the requirements of the plants. This has the advantage that you can meet the special requirements of each plant individually, e.g. sandy soil for giant feather grass or special soil for rhododendron bushes.
So mix the soil specifically for each planting hole and fill it with it.
2. Bed border
Now place the bed border. This can be a hedge of low-growing shrubs or a row of boulders or something similar.
3. Set plants
Now plant your plants. Note that a few inches of mulch ($259.00) is applied to the surface.
4. Place weed fleece
Now cover the entire area with weed fleece (€21.70). Cut holes in the fleece where there are plants. Make sure that the strips overlap slightly.
5. Spread gravel
Now spread a layer of pebbles one to several centimeters thick on the stone bed. Leave out the area around the plants in a circle.
6. Mulch
Now cover the area around the plants with a different colored gravel or mulch such as bark mulch.