Near the House – The Rockery

One of the features we acquired with the garden was a low curved bank of rocks opposite the sun room, and in front of the tall privet hedge which obscured the beautiful view . Some thought had gone into the placement of this rockery as it linked and made sense of the level change to the top garden. Maybe once it was very attractive, but it had clearly seen better days. It was neither a rockery or a wall, but a motley collection of smallish sandstone boulders which had become overgrown with ground elder.

The first section to go was the straight narrow border that ran right across the front of the house. We got rid of this, and the established privet hedge behind it, to give access to, the view of the field and the beyond.

As time went on, prompted by the sudden demise of a Japanese Acer in the border, the rockery to the left of the back door was dismantled and reconstructed. The border was cut back to improve the shape, retaining the larger shrubs at the back and completely clearing the rocks and overgrown mess at the front.

It was always a longer term plan to get rid of the rocks altogether and make the border more attractive and primarily easier to maintain. This was eventually achieved by redesigning the access path through the entrance door to the grass garden and orchard, and creating some simple raised borders using new railway sleepers. By relocating the path the old well could be incorporated in a cleaner layout.