Viewing post #1075739 by hampartsum

Now while I face placing my rocks in their new setting I wonder what I'm trying to accomplish in this new thematic garden . The area is surrounded by evergreen conifers and is like a room about 25yds wide by 30 yds deep with five separate borders. It is placed on a northwise looking incline , along the main gravel driveway.;( btw here in the south north means towards the sun) . The back border has two paper bark birches providing dappled shade. Under these thrive Alstroemerias . The rest of the borders are in full sun. The area was originally an internal road roundabout that is being renovated into a rock garden...I'll keep adding boulders...which I enjoy gathering five min away from the side of the road embankments...slowly over the course of even 5 years, the place will keep developing in structure and slow growing perennials. Some will be of seeds that I've yet to receive, sow germinate, successfuly grow the plants and eventually place inside the borders. Perhaps what I'll choose as a criterion of grouping is more of ecotype. One of the beds with rocks will be closer to a humid alpine rockery with plants that have similar water requirements, the other on the drier side closer to steppe, while the third for plants that require acidic soils ( i.e heathers) while the remainder for shade loving plants. Meanwhile since the place is prepared I thought of spring bulbs such as Muscari, Ornithogallum, of which I have plenty supply . There are no specialized rock garden nurseries here. So imagining what will grow each season is a challenge in itself. I never had a chance of reading R. Farrar books; I don't approach gardening from a conceptual way, I do accept constraints given by terrain, climate and growth requirements of the specific plants and group them accoordingly; also the constraint of getting hold of the specific plants themselves. Nevertheless I still visualize this beautiful garden with color, texture, contrast, shape and proportion and inmense opportunities of joy, creating and caring for each of these very special specimens. I really don't care if it doesn't fit into any given set of garden design category. I simply want to share my life with those plants since they provide me so much happiness. I'll try to place each other in such a way that each will be enhanced and also contribute to general harmony. Sometimes they'll be misplaced, others will have outnumbered or overgrown . They will have to be culled. Others replaced. Year after year, always improving horticulturally and aesthetically.I'm already looking out for species from the Caucasus and the Pontic mountains in Anatolia, my ancestral homeland. Others from mountain regions of the world and some native. What I admit is the incredible enthusiasm and stimulus provided by rock gardening Also the breadth of study and research in such staggering diversity. That in itself will keep me busy in contentment...until I depart...
I was fortunate in life in having travelled just a bit both the New World and also the Old World ( Europe). At that time I was professionally engaged in national parks and nature conservation. Comparing these I was surprised what they meant for each. The latter just had no untouched regions altogether! Being a New World person, conceptual restraints amd definitions somehow stiffle necessary my freedom of choice. Our visions really differ. So when I watch in Internet "naturalistic" however European gardens, what immediately comes to my mind our very different sense of space in these so different worlds. However I still learn from both .Then of course there are those who might want to transpose say an English cottage garden into the middle of Patagonia, which may well prove an impossible pursuit...
PS. all of these issues are part of MY gardens...because they are the kind of issues I include when I create , tend ,enjoy or show my gardens