Alpines,succulents and grasses in rock gardens

Alpines and rock gardens

Alpines and rock gardens were once high fashion, there were various things every serious gardener had to have, and a rockery was definitely one of them.

When we started our landscape and design business we were building them everywhere.
I loved constructing them, all the different types of rocks that were available meant you could design them in a huge variety of ways and incorporate them with water, fish ponds, waterfalls etc.
Rockeries and alpines had come into fashion in the late 19th century. 
Grand rockeries were quite simply a status symbol for wealthy gardeners.
Expensive they may have been to build and maintain, but with the latest plants being brought back from across the world by adventurous plant hunters they were perfect for showing off wealth. 
One of the best large privately owned gardens in Poole, Dorset, England is Compton Acres, it was founded in 1920 by Thomas William Simpson, an entrepreneur who had become wealthy through the manufacture of margarine would you believe.

  The gardens are a popular tourist attraction well worth a visit

This outstanding example of the Arts and Crafts style of landscape design uses a combination of rock-work and water to create a realistic landform giving views from and under the bridges.

Many tons of red sandstone and grey limestone were used to create two contrasting areas. Mature specimens of “dwarf” conifers are interspersed with a huge variety of appropriate plants including Euphorbia myrsinites, Fascicularia bicolor, Iberis sempervirens and many spring bulbs. It is thought to be one of the largest privately owned rock garden in the country. 

Compton Acres consists of five themed sub-gardens: an Italian garden, a rock and water garden, a heather garden, a Japanese garden and a less formal garden called the "Wooded Valley".

definitely one of our favourite gardens

The ever-expanding middle classes went in for them, so the market for plants was clearly enormous. unfortunately commercial nursery's jumped on the bandwagon and sold many totally unsuitable for the smaller rockery's.
Soon  the source of the stones started to dry up and you paid a lot for a very few small boring ones many working families even made there own stones out of concrete usually with disastrous results.
The best stones were Charlton mackerel and ham   
[this is a good example of ham stone] 

We perfered to go and hand pick a load to find the best and most unusual shapes, my favourite was /still is  Charlton mackerel it  was fascinating to break apart as it was full of really interesting fossils and was just fantastic to use thinking of ways featuring the fish and ammonite fossils in walls, you can still buy small amounts direct from the quarry but its

very expensive and we use it occasionally as  fossil pictures in the sides of walls soon sadly all the good quarries closed and the stone left just wasn't suitable for the job and there were some ugly rockery's built for a while in bad areas with rubbish plants no wonder they went out of fashion.
With the demise of the rockery, there has been a massacre of plant availability, so we have been busy cultivating our own favourites at our nursery growing a mix of hardy perennials, selected grasses, succulents and alpines we still build rockeries nowadays but they have changed with the times we also have been trying to source new supplies of stone from other parts of the country some as far away as India the problem  of course is haulage costs.


This is a great example of the wonderful sculptural quality of succulents i love them, just remember perfect drainage  is  there main requirement.
l use a lot of tufa when building succulent areas  its a volcanic rock and comes from allover the world its full of bubbles and is very light compared to other rocks its passable to buy it with so many bubbles in it it will float on water I'm not kidding! You can also carve holes easily  in it easily to put succulents in to.
Succulent rockerys can be artfully arranged in a completely different way to the old-fashioned rockery.
Recently there has been a resurgence in succulents grasses and alpines especially among the young they particularly like the artistic side of the plants and that there is so many ways of displaying them ie vertical walls roofs, mini gardens, troughs, tubs, tea pots  actually the more original/wacky the container the better is the current fashion see pins at this page https://uk.pinterest.com/botanicapop/succulent-plants/ .
Time to re-think alpine, succulent and ornamental grass propagation especcialy succulents there is so many variations of them now and as they frequently produce sports [natural variations in colour shape habit etc] it's passable to have a plant no one else has, by keeping a eye on seedlins or plants that produce offsets, propergating them potting them up and see if going to produce more of the same but like all natrual mutations some are good, some bad, if its extra good you could have it named after you.
 Alpines succulents and ornamental grasses start thinking out of the box and  use them in a sculptural and design-led ways and start growing these amazing plants once again.