The back story: There’s a mound in the garden created from the ton or so of earth we dug out many years ago to install the 3m in-ground trampoline (one of the best things we ever purchased – but that’s another story). My original envisaged design for the mound was for it to be grass covered with white rocks, reminiscent of hillocks or moorland. A short while later it also became the entrance to the castle with it’s drawbridge.
Except that over time it never really developed that way…. no short grass (guess I’d need something like constantly grazing sheep or geese or something like that), but it did take on a character of it’s own. A pond with waterfall and running stream you can paddle along was created nearby and sort of overshadowed it as a feature. It is also shaded in the afternoon by some silver birches planted in the middle of the garden when they were about 2m-3m high and now mature trees, something like 10-15m high. The dappled shade is lovely, but the ways the trees have grown, has meant the mound just didn’t get used. Over the years, nobody used it as a path, and the castle eventually had to be demolished as it became structurally unsound. So the mound effectively became overgrown to the point that the rocks were no longer visible. The second photo is only a few years, before the silver birches.
Even without the castle, the mound remained demanding to be a feature. Another driving force behind this was the loss of a very mature acer in the garden. It was a lovely tree, but its loss opened up a longer vista down the garden, over the pond and waterfall and effectively now focused on the mound, with the backlighting of morning sun on the stipa’s huge panicles of oat-like seed heads, creating a very ethereal effect.
So with the mound now a focal point throughout the year, it suggested it needed redevelopment. I still however wanted a path or at least an easy way to the top. You always get that one child that wants to climb to the top 🙂 … and this is a garden for children to explore and play, just as much for adults.
I did consider extending the water feature another couple of metres so that it started on the mound. Except that’s where money becomes a consideration, and while it’s a possibility, I don’t have the money for the additional slate, as well as the other things that go into building water courses.
I had actually forgotten how many rocks were on the mound to start with… I guess if I had gone back over the old photos I’d have remembered. I don’t know if there’s a half-ton or ton, but it was a few days to dig them all out. With the stipa being such a feature, I left them in place, but digging the stones gave me opportunity to improve the mainly clay soil, by spreading some compost from a well matured compost bin.
Actually, digging out the rocks was the hardest part. Once they were piled to one side, it was easier to place them and create a new rockery slope…. and also resist the temptation of overdoing the number of rocks. In this case I wanted to create the illusion of a rockery developing from an old rock slide, but to create the randomness of a rock slide I effectively engineered one by selecting several ‘anchor’ stones that would become the foot of the rockery, and then lobbing rocks onto the slope so they rolled into a position, occasionally adjusting if it didn’t feel right or looked unstable…. so it’s more or less a semi-random, but hopefully one that’s feels more natural.
To give the rockery the effect of the rocks having been there for while, I packed crevices with soil and gave the area a drenching with water, to help the soil work its way into the crevices. This helped generate a more immediate weathered look as well as work out the natural water-courses. This was useful for the development of the ‘seat’, a large squared-off rock that gave me the idea of creating a quiet place to sit, shaded by the silver birches and slightly secluded by the acer. A place to just ‘be’ or to read, or whatever. However, in the process of looking at water run-off, I found the water was washing over it and depositing soil, which I didn’t want. So I had some fun creating channels and encouraging natural water courses to divert water draining from the top of the mound around the stone rather than over it (there are advantages to letting your child try to damn up streams on beaches or mountain streams :-))
Plant wise: I’ve started with some creeping thyme. Something which will hopefully spread out, but stay short, scramble among the rocks and tolerate footfall. Not to mention smelling nice. It’ll also, ‘fingers crossed’, provide that splash of colour in late spring – early summer. Will just have to see how things go.
Unfortunately, it’s only used up about half of the original rock that was there. So there is a fair amount of rock that I have not yet decided what I really want to do with it.