Gravel gardens are great for suppressing weeds, conserving moisture and showing off your plants. If you garden in a hot, dry climate or on the coast where steady winds dry plants out, gravel mulch is ideal for conserving moisture.
Beth Chatto's famous gravel garden, Essex, UK
Gardens of grasses, smaller plants or natives from rocky hillsides are well suited to a gravel garden. Succulents also like a gritty soil and a rich, wet soil can lead to rotting.
Make the garden fit into the larger environment; try to use some larger rocks, pieces of wood (gum is great as it doesn't rot away) or big old stumps if you can find them. In a coastal garden include some flotsam; ethnic objects for a Mediterranean or Mexican themed garden and something surreal for a succulent garden.
Our Project: A Native Gravel Garden
In our project an existing garden of hebes, braccyglottis, Sophora 'Dragon's Gold' and pachystegia was extended to provide a transition area of grasses, libertia and aciphylla. All wonderful spiky and structural native plants.
Follow the project through and we will come back to it soon to show you how it is growing!
Making a gravel garden uses techniques similar to those for a bark garden. The plants, aspect and mood may differ, but the preparation and method are comparable. A gravel or bark garden is often favoured as it is low-maintenance, the mulch material suppressing weeds, and a great option for those with large gardens or who prefer to gaze in admiration in the weekends rather than pull weeds.
First we sketched the shape of the border using a garden hose, and then some old gum branches, left from felling some trees the previous year, were used to give an edge to work the gravel to and keep it from the surrounding lawn.
The ground was then cleared of weeds to give the plants a better start.
The plants were laid out, making clumps of each grass variety and placing the other plants amongst them for contrast while avoiding for a spotty effect. The plants were planted in generous planting holes and watered in well.
Under the gravel it is important to provide another layer of weed-suppressing material if your new gravel garden is not to be invaded by weeds, and especially if low maintenance is your aim. You can use weed-cloth available from your local nursery, layers of newspaper, or cartons, even old carpet (old, flattened cartons can be "lumpy" and difficult to cover with mulch). We used a combination of newspaper and weed-cloth.
If using newspapers you must spread the papers, section-by-section (i.e. 8 pages or more thick) over the new border, leaving spaces for the plants. If you butt the paper up against the plant the space for weeds is reduced and the plant will push a bigger hole as it grows.
The papers were watered as they were laid, this stops the breeze scattering until covered and, more important, it helps the ground below to continue to receive moisture through the mulch.
A proprietary 'weed-cloth' can be used instead of the papers but some perennial weeds, such as couch grass (known as twitch in some regions), can penetrate the cloth and are difficult to eradicate. We used both papers and weed-cloth to give a double protective layer. The weed cloth was laid over the papers and a 'X' cut in the weed cloth for each plant, larger for the shrubs and bulky grasses, smaller for the small plants.
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The elegant gravel garden at Denmans, UK
Make the garden fit into the larger environment
Succulents like the sharp drainage gravel provides
Invaluable 'Pachystegia insignis' are ideal for gravel gardens
Romantic perennial planting spilling onto gravel
Rocks and gravel make an ideal setting for NZ natives
Water the newspaper thoroughly
Cut an 'X' for each plant | |
