How to Plant a Geogarden Outside
- 1). Select the theme for your garden. In a public garden you might wish people to learn about the variety of rocks in their county or state. Your goal may be to set aside an area for rest. In a private garden, rocks may be used to create interesting shapes and shadows, to bring visual variety to a flat landscape or to make an area of your yard stand out. Part of your theme will determine your choice of location. A garden for meditation may benefit from having shade trees nearby. A garden to be explored by touching and climbing might be best located next to a playground.
- 2). Create a plan for your garden. This can be a simple as using stones to line an existing path or as complex as the snail and butterfly designs carried out at Martin-Luther Universitat. Having a plan in place above all simplifies the placement of what are likely to be very heavy rocks; moving these may take substantial work.
- 3). Determine the landscaping or planting that will support your geogarden. Decide whether your rocks look best against a background of sand, soil, pebbles or grass (remembering the logistics of mowing grass around rocks). Use small-scale plantings to enhance the rocks. A single clump of pale ornamental grass against a dark granite or a small-leafed ground cover to frame a rugged and angular composite rock do more to set off the stars of the geogarden than does a whole flowerbed. The dappled shade of a tall shrub or small tree may add considerable fascination to a large smooth rock.
- 4). Provide resting places for people to admire and absorb your garden. These can be benches or just more stones to sit on. Decide whether you want to provide other learning opportunities, such as descriptive signs or a brochure. (The Martin-Luther brochure is in German, but its photographs and maps give a wonderful allover sense of the garden and encourage close examination. Whether you can read the text or not, the brochure lets the garden speak for itself.)