While the garden remains a work in progress after thirty-three years, some parts are more actively worked on than others. Tiny treasures are regularly plugged wherever gaps can be found, and occasionally a tree or shrub is required to fill some larger space if something is lost in a storm. I don’t expect this will ever end, no matter that my wife snarls every time I bring a plant home. She’s had good reason to be extra snarly lately.

Late in autumn a year ago I finally had my fill of the damp, weedy area of lawn in the lower, rear garden. The grass was dug and soil mounded, and small boulders placed to retain the steep drainage ditches necessary to keep the area dry. I started planting early in the spring (above), and while an unexpectedly huge canna lily is only a temporary placeholder, a variegated, weeping ‘Whitewater’ redbud will be planted in a few weeks that will fill most of the remaining space once everything begins growing next spring.

But, and of course there’s always another but, the curved swath of lawn with granite pavers down the middle continued to be plagued by weeds. So, while I look for fillers to replace the grass, I was recently inspired to remove a section of lawn right up to the pavers (above) to construct a rock garden (below).

There are boulder walls scattered around the garden, and I particularly enjoy ones in shaded areas with native ferns and coral bells (Heuchera) tucked into the crevices. These thrive in a small amount of soil, but I’ve failed more than once with rock garden plants in sunny spots. Any soil seems too much, even with the addition of coarse material to improve drainage, so I’ve been determined to do a proper rock garden. Until recently, no sunny areas seemed appropriate.

I’ve seen substantial rock gardens using large flat stones, and while I claim to have never read a book, I recently scanned The Crevice Garden by Kenton Seth and Paul Spriggs. This pushed me over the top to get started, though there was not adequate space for a rock garden anywhere close to the scale I would prefer.

My little garden was to be slightly elevated with small, rounded boulders to match ones already retaining the slope, but instead of a soil mix, the backfill would be entirely gravel and sand. I’ve moved many tons of boulders in this garden over the years, so moving another truckload was not too big a deal.

Aside from a few aches the next day in my aged back, a few of the granite stepping stones were cracked while wheelbarrowing, but all boulders were placed as naturally as possible and backfilled with the gravel mix. Several sedums were transplanted into the gravel, and two deliveries of succulents and ice plants arrived just as the boulders and the backfill were completed. These are tiny, and some might take a few years to show up, but the rock garden turned out just about how I envisioned it.

The video below will show some of the work in progress …