I know, I know, rockeries are hardly fashionably at the moment, but I have just established one in centre place in my front garden. A few years ago, I built a brick troff on a concreted area – south-east facing. I filled it with a mixture of composted bark, top soil and compost. Since then, and many failed annual displays later, I decided that the site was far too dry for bedding plants – after all, the troff is only 12 inches deep.
The weekend just gone, I clear the troff of all of it’s plants – mostly campanula, tastefully arrange an array of large rocks and planted a selection of alpines. I then generously sprinkled plenty of grit, covering the compost to act as a mulch: lock in moisture, lock out weeds. Looks good to me. The rocks that I have used are local and my village is full of the stuff, so it doesn’t look at all out of place or tacky.
In many ways, I believe that alpine beds are the future as more and more of our summers are hotter and dryer. That might sound funny as the last two have been far from that, but most meteorologists agree that our current turbulent weather is nothing more than a short phase.
Alpines are accustomed to extremes in temperature and draught. Many are found in mountainous regions of the world, scratching out a living within cliff and clevises. They require very little intervention on our part and will happily spread and provide colour throughout the year.