a gravel garden
Recently I worked on designing a garden in a new housing development that had an extended area covered in stones. After checking what was underneath the stones, it was obvious that there wasn’t much good soil at all, mainly rubble from a construction site, which was also quite compacted.
Challenged with a lack of good soil in this space, and having in mind the carbon impact that re-designing this space with imported soil would have, we opted for a more environmentally aware solution. We basically decided to work with what was already on the site, and thought we will create a gravel garden.
A gravel garden design is ideal for sites with a very poor soil. The selection of plants available to thrive in these conditions is very extensive. One of the most inspiring gravel gardens is one created by Beth Chatto. The selection of plants that were used to create her gravel garden is astonishing!
For our project, we selected a variety of drought tolerant plants. It is very important to have in mind, that when creating a gravel garden design, you will need to work with plants that do not require much watering, as in these poor soil conditions the water drains away very quickly.
Although, the top layer of gravel will stop water moisture from evaporating, we need to be very careful to select the right plants for the challenging condition of a gravel garden.
With a gravel garden design, we are in many ways working with the conditions of a dry garden, and therefore we need to choose plants that like hot, sunny situations.
For this gravel garden some of the plants that we selected were: English lavender 'Munstead', and Catmint 'Walker's Low'. We also planted Allium cristophii bulbs, that mimics the round shapes of lavender bushes, adding to the architectural character of this little garden.
The lavender, which is already nicely shaped into small spheres, makes a nice round accent in this gravel garden design, as well as being a well performing choice for these poor soil conditions. It will also bring colour and scent into this garden, while at the same time providing a good structure for the autumn and winter months.
When thinking about selecting plants for your gravel garden, look for plants with a grey, glaucous foliage colour. The colouring of foliage indicates that these types of plants are adapted to grow in gardens with soil that is stony and rubbly. It also means that these plants will require minimal watering and are drought tolerant.
In a gravel garden design, we can leave more space between individual plants or group of plants. Leaving more space around plants allows us to appreciate more the shapes and textures of plants.
As we already have a good mulch from the gravel around plants, there is no need for dense planting here, as we might want to have when creating a planting design for a garden border.
The colour palette in a gravel garden design will be greyish, blue and violet, but the overall design should rely on the shapes and textures of plants.
In the end this design should have similar visual impact when you look at it in black and white, a monochrome, and this is achieved by juxtaposing different forms of foliage and flower together, so they are easily distinguished.
To limit the need for maintenance in your gravel garden, you might want to add more ground covering plants. They will crawl and spread, and as a result stop unwanted plants (weeds) from appearing.
There is a variety of good ground covering plants that would work really well in a gravel garden design. Thyme plants, Stachys byzantina or Achillea tomentosa are good examples.
With time your gravel garden might require some amount of editing and adjusting, as some plants might self-seed, others will spread via roots and runners.
In the end it is up to you how you want to imagine the development of your gravel garden design in the years ahead. It is always surprising and joyful to witness, what plants can do when they are given a chance, even in the garden with such challenging conditions.