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Rockery plants ideas


Rockery Plants - 8 Fascinating Rock Garden Ideas

Last update: Home & Garden

Rock gardens are among the most popular yard decorations. They are perfect both for small gardens and extensive spaces. One just needs to adjust the size of the planned rockery. It's extremely easy to create an alpine garden - all you need is a small soil mound and a few rocks on top. The important part are the plants you'll use in your rockery. Make sure to pick them carefully, as not all flowers can grow among rocks. You can choose from creeping plants, perennials, small bushes or rock garden succulents. Everything depends on what you like. Check what are the most popular rockery plants.

What are the characteristics of rockery plants?

Plants for rockeries are a special type of plants, distinct not only for their interesting looks, but also needs about the soil and care. Rockery plants have to be drought-resistant, as they cannot count on plenty of moisture on a rocky slope. Creeping, sun-resistant plants are the most recommended, unless your rock garden is located under trees. In such a case, you can pick shade-loving plants. Otherwise, plants growing in full sun are exposed to the risk of dehydration and burns.

What are the best rock garden plants - annuals or perennials?

Are you resistant to change and want your garden to look the same or at least similar for years to come? It’s possible with perennial rockery plants. Although they require a bit more attention over the winter, at the same time, you eliminate the annual dilemma of picking new plants and planting them. In a way, you save your time.

Annual rock garden plants are a perfect choice if you like changes and want to enjoy new species every year. Many gardeners pick this form of cultivation - primarily because of the wide variety of plants available.

Source:zielonyogrodek.pl/ogrod/zakladanie-ogrodu/4902-rosliny-na-skalniak-co-posadzic-na-skalniaku

When to plant rockery plants?

Rock gardens are easy to organize, and you can create them anytime - from spring to late summer, in some cases even in early autumn. A lot depends on the plants you pick. They need enough time to take root before temperatures drop to 0°C (32 F).

As stressed by gardening experts, the best time for planting plants in a rockery is between May and June. This way, you can count on quick and beautiful growth.

Where to buy plants for rockeries?

Make sure to shop for rockery plants in trusted and reliable places. You can find interesting creeping plants in gardening centers. Regardless, plant nurseries offer a much broader choice.

Pay attention to the state of the plants you’re about to buy. Make sure they aren’t damaged. Also, search for signs of pests and diseases. If you bring such flowers to your garden - you can lose the plants that already grow in there.

Source:deccoria.pl/artykuly/porady-ogrodnicze/rosliny-na-skalniak-wieloletnie-zimozielone-plozace-niewymagajace-w-uprawie-przeglad-najciekawszych-propozycji-34-8850

Moss phlox - rockery plants that create flower carpets

The creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) is often called moss phlox because of the way it spreads. It’s characteristic for its intense color - pink, noticeable from a distance. Phlox plants develop extensive root systems, and they grow rapidly. They make highly durable rockery plants - resistant to frosts and droughts.

Source:forumogrodnicze.info/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=7089&start=16

Stemless gentian - intense blue alpine garden plants

Although the stemless gentian (Gentiana acaulis) has three color varieties, dark blue is the most popular one. Such flowers commonly appear in rock gardens.

The stemless gentian is a little more demanding rock garden plant, as it likes moist substrates - and it grows better in permeable soils. If you decide to plant it in your garden - make sure to provide it with everything it needs.

Source:herbaperu.eu/jak-poprawic-apetyt-naturalnie-gencjana-i-gojnik-ratunkiem-dla-ukladu-pokarmowego

Himalayan fleece flower - unusual rock garden plants

Is your backyard a little more spacious than standard, and therefore you can create a more extensive rock garden? You need very good-looking plants. The Himalayan fleece flower (Polygonum affine) is one of them.

Small, very green stems make the base of the plant. Longer stalks contain stick-like clusters of flowers. Their color is white and pink.

The Himalayan fleece flower grows taller than other plants typical for a rockery garden, so it’s not suitable for tiny areas. But it looks great when combined with large rocks.

Source:allegro.pl/oferta/rdest-pokrewny-ladna-ozdobna-bylina-vii-x-7187144598

Myrtle spurge - popular creeping plants to grow in a rockery

Myrtle spurge (Euphorbia myrsinites) is one of the most unusual rockery plants. Many refer to it as exotic, and there’s a lot of truth in it, as it looks very interesting.

Are you wondering what the myrtle spurge looks like? A single thick stem contains lots of smaller, nearly identical leaves. The plant is sometimes compared to a snake. But that’s not all! These rockery plants look beautiful when they bloom. It happens between May and June. The flowers are tiny and yellow.

Source:ogrodeus.pl/wilczomlecz-mirtowaty

Carnations - long-blooming rock garden plants

Carnations (Dianthus) are common yard plants, not typically associated with rock gardens. Apart from the classic long carnations, there are also shorter varieties - which often appear in rockeries.

Why picking such common rock garden plants? First, they look really beautiful. That’s not all! The fact that they don’t require much attention and grow in basically any type of soil is their biggest advantage.

Source:target.com.pl/porady-i-inspiracje/uprawy/ozdobne/balkonowe-i-rabatowe/gozdzik-ogrodowy

Common heather - small and beautiful alpine garden shrubs

Is the common heather (Calluna Vulgaris) a well-known plant to you? No wonder, it’s a very popular perennial, or rather a shrub grown in rock gardens. Although most people associate them with autumn (and rightfully so, as it’s the time when they bloom) - they show their colors at the beginning of summer.

Purple varieties are the most popular. Decorative plants nurseries also offer white and pink flowers of this type. The pink ones look particularly beautiful - especially in autumn, when colorful leaves cover the ground around the rockery.

Heather plants are perfect plants for a rock garden located in an open space. They like sunlight - if provided with enough, they grow quick and bloom beautifully.

Source:zielonyogrodek.pl/pielegnacja/uprawa-roslin/10063-bledy-w-uprawie-wrzosow-sprawdz-co-robisz-zle

Common yarrow - underrated rock garden plants

When hearing the name “common yarrow” (Achillea millefolium), do you think of a wild medicinal herb used by older generations? You’re right! Those plants have become popular rockery plants as well.

Yarrow has quite tall stems with tiny white flowers. It looks very beautiful, although it’s underrated by some people. Because it grows quite tall - it’s typically used in large rock gardens so that it doesn’t cover other plants.

Source:1000roslin.pl/krwawnik-pospolity

Aubrieta - tiny purple perennial plants for a rock garden

Aubrieta (Aubrieta × cultorum) resembles shamrock because of its leaves. It’s characteristic for its rich blooming. Thanks to this and the intense purple color, the plant can be easily spotted from afar.

Aubrieta is a perennial plant for an alpine garden. It’s one of the earliest-blooming plants. With good soil and weather conditions, you can notice the flowers as early as the beginning of April.

Source:ogrodeus.pl/zagwin-ogrodowy

📍 What are the best plants for a sunny rock garden?

Moss phloxes are the best plants for rockeries located in full sun. But it's not your only choice. You can also pick alyssums, garden arabis or wild thyme.

📍 What are the best perennial rockery plants?

Perennial plants for an alpine garden are typically creeping plants. If your rock garden is large enough, you can plant myrtle or Amur silvergrass. Smaller rock garden plants include mossy saxifrage or Jenny's stonecrop.

📍 When can I plant rock garden plants?

A rock garden is a universal form of yard decoration, so you can plant in it from early spring to late autumn. Do you want to ensure that your rockery plants take root and bloom beautifully? Plant them between May and June - but make sure to know the recommendations for each plant.

📍 What are the best shade rockery plants?

If your rock garden is located in a shaded spot, make sure to plant shade-loving plants in it. This way, you can be sure of a beautiful result and blooming plants. Alumroot, blue bugle and creeping myrtle are good choices, in this case.

Dorota Czerwińska Author

Dorota is an economist by profession, but her biggest hobby is photography and interior design. In Treehouse since the beginning of 2019.

Contact: [email protected]

33 Best Rock Garden Plants for Sun or Shade

By

David Beaulieu

David Beaulieu

David Beaulieu is a landscaping expert and plant photographer, with 20 years of experience. He was in the nursery business for over a decade, working with a large variety of plants. David has been interviewed by numerous newspapers and national U.S. magazines, such as Woman's World and American Way.

Learn more about The Spruce's Editorial Process

Updated on 07/11/22

The Spruce / Evgeniya Vlasova

A rock garden—sometimes known as a rockery or alpine garden—is a planting area designed with a hardscape featuring a selection of gravels, rocks, or boulders. It typically includes a softscape of perennial and annual plants suitable for a rocky substrate—sometimes with no soil. The beauty of a well-planned rock garden is the rocks and plants work together to enhance the total impact; it's organized but, when done well, looks natural and not forced.

When arranging plants with rocks, you can get a natural look by not planting in rows or patterns; instead, use a variety of plants and different heights, like perennials, ornamental grasses, small shrubs, and creeping groundcovers to balance the hardness of the rocks. Also, consider giving the rock garden contrast with outcroppings of tall plants along a plant border, shoots of whispy texture, or a small burst of color with seasonal flowers.

"Rock garden plants" are not a botanical classification, although many are succulents. They share specific characteristics, including drought resistance, a preference for good drainage, and a compact growth habit. Here are 33 of the best plants for a rock garden, from small to large varieties.

Tip

To get plant selection right, be mindful of your rock garden conditions such as sun or shade, damp or dry. Group specimens with similar growing requirements.

9 Tips for Designing and Building a Rock Garden

Arrangement of rockeries in the garden: recommendations, nuances, ideas

When you look at a well-groomed rocky garden, so "naturally" overgrown with ornamental plants, it seems that there is nothing complicated in its arrangement. But this is a misleading impression.

Everything is important in making a rockery. It is necessary to select interesting rocks, achieve their color combination with pebbles, include plants in the composition that can simultaneously emphasize the beauty of the stone and not get lost against its background. Without special knowledge, this is quite difficult to do.

Here are some ideas and tips to help you create an interesting rock garden.

Combination of rockery with a recreation area

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Rockery on the site - beautiful, fashionable, practical

Rockery is a close relative of the alpine slide, but, unlike it, is created in a horizontal plane, sometimes with a slight slope. Like a rock garden, it imitates mountainous terrain - rocky scree, gorge, exit to the surface of rocks. Since this is primarily a rocky-gravel composition, boulders and decorative filling are given the main attention. Plants also serve as a spectacular addition.

Rockeries are much more democratic than rock gardens, and this is their advantage. In addition to the traditional alpine flora, conifers, grasses, wormwood, ornamental shrubs are welcome in their design.

Why are rock and gravel gardens so popular?

Rockery size may vary. But on a standard plot of 6-10 acres, it is not advisable to break a large rocky garden - it will look ridiculous and tasteless. Much more interesting are thoughtful miniature compositions that combine the beauty of stone and plants. We propose to talk about such methods.

Rockery imitating a mountain stream

Ideas for inspiration

When designing a rockery, it is important to remember that it is part of the overall picture of the garden, so it should be organically connected with the lawn, set off by paving, and connected to the reservoir. The more natural it looks, the better.

1. Imitation of a rock outcrop

If there is a small hill on the site, you can create a landscape corner that resembles a rock outcrop on the soil surface.

To solve the problem, you will need several medium-sized boulders. It should feel like they have grown into the ground. To do this, they are slightly “drowned”, and the sole is decorated with crushed stone of the same rock as the main stone.

Plants are positioned so that they seem to grow out of crevices, breaking through a rocky embankment. Slow-growing conifers are usually planted on the "rock" - mountain pine, stunted spruce, juniper, as well as ampelous and ground cover plants of the alpine type - sedums (sedums), saxifrage, saxifrage.

The basis of the composition shown in the photo below is gneiss rock with an interesting layered structure and an unusual color that combines light blotches. To imitate scree, “stone bark” was used - crushed stone of a fine fraction from the same stone.

Against the background of bluish green thuja, it seems that the boulders are cast in silver. Stones literally attract the eye - you want to look at them, touch the rough surface. Blooming sedum adds a sense of warmth and sunshine to the mountain landscape.

Decoration of a rockery in the form of a rock outcrop

2. A rocky corner near a pond

Two elements can be combined in a rockery - mountains and water. Stones, as a rule, frame one of the sides of the reservoir, preferably southern or western, so that the plants receive enough sun. If a recreation area is provided next to the water, a rocky corner is broken from the opposite side so that it can be viewed from the best viewing point.

Large boulders are needed for a large pond, but if the pond is small, it is better to refuse overall boulders, otherwise it will turn into a puddle against their background.

Even a few large stones can make a picture, but they must be interesting. Look at the photo, how beautifully the decorative chip reveals the structure of sandstone, how unusual the combination of gray and sandy yellow looks. The final touch is an amazing silver-gray bush that enhances the naturalness of the composition. There are many perennials of this shade. For example: decorative wormwood, seaside cineraria, sapling, eryngium.

An example of decorating a reservoir with blocks of sandstone

3. Stony and gravel composition

Rockery does not have to be large, sometimes a small fragment is enough to draw attention to one or another corner of the garden. Typically, such a composition is placed in a well-visible place, for example, against the background of a parterre lawn or in the bends of garden paths.

Marble looks luxurious in rocky and gravel gardens. In the photo below, it is a warm sandy-beige shade with a horizontal pattern on the chips. In unison, a backfill of caramel-colored marble crushed stone was selected. It dilutes a uniform color scheme and plays the role of an accent of a rich purple shade. This is a creeping perennial plant that will not create problems in care and will delight with bright colors all spring and the first half of summer.

Instead of purple, you can also plant pink shaving or choose other plants of the same type, such as saxifrage.

Rocky-gravel composition with marble

Landscaping project for
plot from Sad-dizain

Details . Laconic rocky gardens in the English style look interesting in such places.

A beautiful structural block, specially crafted to present it from the best angle, is placed on top of a gravel bed. Crushed stone is selected from a rock similar in structure, matching in color or playing in contrast. Nearby are planted cereals with bluish-green foliage, beloved by the British, decorative wormwood, dwarf coniferous trees or bushes. It turns out stylish and elegant.

The dominant of both the first and second groups is a picturesque block shaded by bushes of Alpine sheep

5. Compositions with exclusive stones

The rocky garden is an art object. How do you like this idea? It is quite possible to realize it if you use decorative stones from the Exclusive category. Each of them has a unique shape - one looks like a piece of petrified wood, the other looks like a sculpture carved from stone, the third looks like volcanic lava frozen in a bizarre bend.

An example of such an object is shown in the photo. An unusual hollow block of terracotta hue resembles a piece of ancient Greek amphora thrown ashore from the depths of the sea. The impression is enhanced by the snow-white marble pebbles "Bianco Carrara", and the plants are selected so as not to distract attention from the stone. Unpretentious arabis with delicate greenery and small white flowers looks elegant, but it is only a frame for the main picture.

An example of decorating a garden with unique natural stones

As you can see, even with a minimal set of stones, you can create stylish compositions. Moreover, a small rockery is more thoughtful. You never get tired of looking at it as a work of art, and every time it reveals new facets.

Top 10 plants for rockeries and rock gardens - professional advice

Not just to survive, but also to shine with its beauty in the difficult conditions of rockeries or rock gardens, not every decorative culture can. This is what should be considered in the process of selecting a plant for such compositions.

We continue our series of articles devoted to the recommendations of the famous British gardener Percy Trower. In past materials, we have already managed to talk about unusual trees that can take their rightful place in your garden. The advice on choosing shrubs had to be divided into two parts at all - such a rich heritage was left behind by one of the leading gardeners of Foggy Albion of the last century.

This time we'll take a look at the plants that Percy Thrower thinks are best for rockeries and rock gardens.

Alyssum and lobularia

Some gardeners mistakenly consider alyssum and sea lobularia to be the same plant. In fact, these ground covers are close relatives. They are very similar to each other, so it is not surprising that they are constantly confused. Be that as it may, the care of both plants is almost identical.

If you manage to properly organize the drainage, then you will not have problems growing these low 15-40 cm shrubs. In dry summers, they will have to be watered periodically, because. despite their almost extreme drought tolerance, these crops require a certain amount of moisture during flowering. To know for sure when it's time to water the alyssum, check the dryness of the soil at a depth of 3-4 cm.

In order for the plant to please you with abundant flowering from May to October, be sure to remove faded inflorescences. However, if you want the plant to propagate by self-sowing, leave some of the flowers so that the seed pods ripen in them.

Armeria

There are about 90 species of this plant, and the height of specific varieties varies between 15-60 cm. This means that you can use armeria both in the foreground and in the background of the composition. Additionally, it should be noted that the color of the flowers of this plant can be white, pink, red, lilac and crimson.

Armeria prefers light, acidic soils. Periodic rejuvenation of the bush (depending on the rate of growth) and timely removal of inflorescences will prolong flowering until autumn.

To prevent freezing in the winter period, it is recommended to cover armeria with spruce branches.

Gentian

Like the vast majority of plants that live on rocks in nature, gentian prefers soils with good drainage. As for the soil in terms of composition, structure and acidity, much depends on the specific type. The Chinese decorated gentian loves acidic soils, the Delescluse gentian loves calcareous soils, the Carpathian yellow-flowered gentian feels good only on well-drained soils.

Flowering is abundant and long-lasting. Under favorable weather conditions, it can last from May to September or even until the very cold.

Saxifrage

Already by the name of this plant, one can understand why a rare rockery or rock garden does without saxifrage. The low 20-25 cm flower stalks of this plant will be an excellent decoration for the slopes of the rock garden, but they will not feel too comfortable at the highest point of the composition, since a long exposure to the sun is contraindicated for the saxifrage.

There are several species of this plant, which differ from each other not only in the color of the flowers (it can vary from white and pale pink to raspberry and purple), but also in the requirements for the composition of the soil. Therefore, when buying a saxifrage variety of your choice, carefully study the recommendations for its cultivation.

Carpathian bell

If you don't visit your dacha very often, and therefore you can't constantly take care of the plants, pay attention to the Carpathian bluebell. This charming plant tolerates both light and shade well, and can also go a long time without watering. In addition, it absolutely does not need top dressing.

However, do not forget that the Carpathian bluebell is very easy to propagate by self-sowing, so it can germinate and bloom in the most unexpected places.

Young

One of the few inhabitants of the Mediterranean, who managed to settle comfortably in the gardens of the middle zone. It is worth noting that in our latitudes, not only roofing, but also Caucasian, spider web, offspring and spherical juveniles have proven themselves very well.

An ideal plant for poor, sandy soils with a high lime content. If you find a suitable site for the young, then the specimens planted in the spring will bloom this year, and after 2-3 seasons they form a dense green carpet.

Juveniles are watered very rarely and only in case of prolonged drought.

Aubrieta

The first flowering of this plant will occur in the second year after planting, regardless of whether you grow it through seedlings or sow in open ground. However, your expectation will not be in vain - obrieta will thank you for your patience with a continuous flower carpet.

And even though the spring flowering may not seem so long to you (shaving "only" blooms for 1-1.5 months, starting from mid-April), the plant more than compensates for this "lack" with repeated autumn flowering.

Stonecrop

Among all types of sedum in rock gardens and rock gardens, ground cover varieties will look most appropriate: stonecrop anakampseros, cornflower blue, hybrid, thick-leaved, Siebold, Kamchatka, Kuril, false, spatula-leaved, multi-stem, bird, divergent, etc.

However, when choosing specific plants, it should be remembered that not all of them tolerate frost well and winter without shelter. You can read more about stonecrops in our separate article.

Phlox subulate

Styloid phloxes differ from other undersized phloxes in their rich color range. Plant petals can be bright pink, lavender, lilac, raspberry, red, purple, white and even colorful!

Separately, it is worth mentioning that this ornamental culture does not require special care, almost does not get sick and grows rapidly.

Enotera

Evening primrose is not afraid of drought and likes well-drained soils. It grows very quickly, so it is not surprising that it is often planted in rock gardens in order to fill the empty space.

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