What types of plants can be used in a rock garden?
Rock gardens are meant to simulate growing conditions found in the world's alpine regions where plants have evolved to survive in an environment dominated by harsh sunlight, heavy snowfall, strong winds, frequent droughts and porous, nutrient deficient soils.
Although there is little we can do to control the weather, we can fill our yards with a variety of materials that together mimic the terrain these plants prefer to grow in, including gravel, crushed stone, rocks and the occasional boulder.
Artfully arranged, these hardscaping materials alone can make a dramatic impact.
Rarely do gardeners limit their rock gardens to true alpine plants, which can be fussy, high maintenance nightmares that succumb to any weather conditions which vary too greatly from those of their native environment. They don't, for instance, care much for the mild, rainy conditions that are the hallmark of weather in Vancouver.
This fickleness leads most gardeners to mix plants into their rock gardens that, strictly speaking, aren't alpines but which adhere closely enough to the basic look of those plants that the overall effect is the same.
The look of an alpine garden is fairly easy to achieve. Plants that grow in those harsh regions are usually dwarf or low-growing and often have bright, colourful flowers. They also tend to have small, narrow, grey, hairy or fleshy leaves and can tolerate lots of bright sunshine while demanding little in the way of irrigation.
There are lots of perennials and small shrubs that conform to these restrictions including dwarf junipers, mugho pines and hemlocks (the 'dwarf' is important), rockroses, heaths, dwarf irises, creeping phloxes, thymes, houseleeks, sedums, saxifrages, pasque flowers, candytuft, coral bells, perennial geraniums, gentians, snow-in-summer, baskets-of-gold, thrift, rockcress, columbines and many more.
Bulbs such as crocuses, species tulips, snowdrops, chionodoxa and muscari all tend to look at home in a rock garden. Annuals, on the other hand, are rarely used in this type of garden. With the exception of something like portulaca, they tend not to have the right look and require more care than one usually puts into the maintenance of a rock garden.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
