Rock Crevice Garden - Volunteer Gardener

Not all gardens look the same. In fact, this one is a really fun mixture of grasses, bulbs, perennials, and lots of different really fun niche rock gardens. So let's go meet the designer. Wow, this agave is really awesome and quite a big size. Thank you. I just put these out here. They are cold hardy too. Yeah. I'm here with Dominic, the designer, and installer, and maintainer, and you name it. The garden man. Of all these things, plants man. This is a really cool concept that you're using these raised areas. Cause I know the agaves need a lot of drainage. Yes. And they like the rock too. So I guess that kind of was hand in hand and evolved. Yeah. Yeah, I've tried to grow agave before and they will go through the winter here. But as soon as spring comes and it's really wet, they just rot away for me. So I got these metal rings at a scrap yard and my intention was to use them as raised beds and kind of bring the soil up and mix more sand and better draining soil in there so I can have them come back. I hope they come back. Yeah, for sure. I love the way you've used these rocks kind of in a circular motif of different sizes, almost like a clock hands. Yeah. As I'm gardening anything and now these rings, I really like to just flow with it and kind of break it up. And you could see there's rings on each side going down. Sure. And I didn't want them to all be, you know, all like a clock like this. I kind of wanted to make each one their own thing. I will alternate the clock dial between them just for like balance and to have three of them. Yeah. But I just, I'm obsessed with crevice gardens. Yeah. And over the winter last year, I started Googling them and just kind of for getting inspiration. Sure. Far Reaches Farm in Oregon or Washington, they're a big inspiration. I love their crevice garden. So just slicing rocks together is mostly what I do here. I like the aesthetic, but it is really important to get a really good kind of draining soil. Right. The kind of plant you put in them. You can grow stuff from like New Zealand, you know, Asia, all kind of stuff from the Himalayas in these kinds of gardens. And people wouldn't think that, but just the rocks and the soil and the raised bed and the thermal energy. I mean, just that free draining soil allows you to grow stuff you would never think would grow here. Yeah. Our humidity, the rain in the summer is our biggest danger to these kinds of plants. So this allows me to grow them. Right. So you're kind of creating its own micro climate. Yeah. It's on micro soils, essentially. That's like a little micro bubble. Yep. The important thing is, and I feel like the major thing is the drainage. That's- The drainage is everything. That's everything for a lot of plants. I've seen big, beautiful agave in certain parts of Tennessee, and they just die for me all the time. And it really is just raising them up and giving them the soil and the sand and that gravel mixture. They don't want to ever be sitting in water. Yeah. So I also have to say this as structural and as strong and clean line as these are, you've kind of flanked it with this loose flowing mixture of grasses, perennials, I see some lavenders here. If you saw all my gardens around the property, probably 80% of my garden is grasses. I love ornamental grasses. Mexican feather grass probably is the most of any grass I have. But I really have been switching into more over the last few years, native plants, but I'll never go fully native. Get out of here. There's too much good stuff. But I'll first come through and usually overlay my grasses or put the grasses down. And then I'll start to patchwork in between. But again, I put my own flair. Like I'll throw the monkey puzzle trees in and then the rock gardens placed and kind of breaks it up. So you're not just looking at like a meadow. Right. The monkey puzzle tree is obviously a major focal point. I really want to go over there and touch that. You can, just be careful. Yeah. So this monkey puzzle tree, it's, I mean, it's just fascinating. Tell me about this. They don't seem real. They almost look like a giant cactus. And that's kind of a little bit why I like them. They look like an arid kind of rock garden plant, but these do grow in our zone. I think they can go as far as six. And they're from Argentina. Their scientific name is Araucaria Araucana. Wow. And these get huge. They start off really slow. Yeah. So I don't really, or haven't planned for maturity. Like it could get big here, but they grow so slow that I'm just hoping I can have it at least get, I don't know, 30 foot tall. Maybe it'll be bigger in my lifetime, but they stay green when they're small, but once they get larger, they almost turn into, they look like a pine tree when they get larger, but the branches kind of bear fall off and they just have an umbrella. I don't think they're beautiful when they're big, honestly. Definitely a specimen plant that everyone's going to want to know about. People always ask about them. And when I go to pick them up at the garden center, they laugh at me because they're like, be careful. And I'm like, this ain't my first time at the rodeo. I pick them up, but you have to swipe up to grab them or they'll stab you. If you just grab it, that would mess you up. Yeah, for sure. They're like, how do you know how to handle that? I did get some puncture wounds prior to this. Yeah, yeah. So the really fascinating thing to me about this is the mixture of different things you've got in here from bulbs to grasses to succulents, some even like cactuses and stuff, and you know, a cat. And my cat, she's the garden cat, she protects it. How did you kind of pull your plant palette together for this, or did you just kind of go along? A lot of the plants now that I grow, because we've been in Tennessee seven years, I really select for what I know does good, that is like not going to die, they pull through. And this rock garden I built this year, like just a few months ago, like a month ago, actually. And I know phlox thrive, they never need, after I put them in and water them, they'll never need any more water, they just will be fine. But all of this stuff is just so tough, resilient, and has proven itself. And the color this time of year is just amazing. Right, so I see, yeah, phlox, dianthus. Creeping thyme. Veronica, speedwell, candy tuft. Candy tuft, yep. And all of these, when they're not in flower, another beautiful thing about them is the creeping thyme always looks good. Even the phlox, it looks like a beautiful evergreen mat. So they kind of just form and cushion the rocks, and I just love the way that looks. It becomes like literally a living wall. Yeah, yeah. So I like diversity, like with the flowers, and then you have rock gardens. It's almost like a piece of art to me. Yeah, for sure. And I know it's kind of like the bulbs and things are kind of the show right now, and I see a lot of small things that are emerging that are, of course, gonna fill the space later. Of course we need the spring bulbs, and these have really been taking me through spring so far. They're beautiful, but a lot of this is underplanted with natives. We have emsonia, a lot of emsonia along here. I love when those fill out, they're beautiful. The moly grass will fill in. What are these big leaves? I can't think, the silphium? The big meadow plant, big huge leaves. Maybe 12 foot tall flower spike with yellow flowers, but they don't take up a lot of space. The leaves only stay two feet, but the flower spikes are like 12 foot tall. We have liatris. Liatris, yeah, the natives. Prairie dropseed, a native grass. But just a lot of native grasses and perennials that work together so beautifully. Yeah, it's fun that the things that kind of grow in the winter and fill the space now, and then during the summer, they kind of get smaller and die back, and then the summer things fill the space, so they kind of take their turns. Yes. Yeah, with the space. My whole goal minus, there's a lot of flowers now too, but my whole goal as a gardener as well is I don't rely on flowers. They're the cherries on top. This has to look good when there's no flowers, and over the winter when, I mean, that wasn't here, but even my hillsides, when there's no flowers, the grass and just the evergreens make it look so alive still. The flowers, when they come in, they really add a punch, but I really try to plant for evergreen, grassy look so that it always looks pretty. So this one looks a bit older to me, this rock garden. Was this your first? Yeah, this was the first one I built after sitting on my phone over winter, staring at crevice gardens. This one I threw out, and I mostly did this because there's a wall here, and I didn't know how to clean the back of it up. I'm like, should I just throw dirt there? So I built the wall, and then when I planted everything, it just did so good, and that's what inspired me to do the rest. Yeah. But you can see how big they'll get just after a year. Oh, the phloxes for sure. Yeah, they're so beautiful. So I know a lot of people probably don't have the time or the space to build something like this, but these little miniature ones you've built are really cool too, and I feel like that's a very approachable thing for someone at home that they could do. You know, playing with the rocks and kind of standing them up and filling those spaces with different succulents and whatnot is a really fun thing. Yeah, you could get rock, obviously, from like a rock yard or wherever, but this specific kind of rock, I like the way, I don't know if it's shale or something, the way it's very slicey or pieced. I get this like alongside the highway where they blew the highway out and all the rock is just pieces because I don't see it anywhere else, and you just throw dirt in there and lay them how you want. Throw more dirt, more gravel, and put like hens and chicks are really easy. I see some people do like maybe five containers of these and do different sizes on the side of their porch is a really cool idea. But yeah, you could totally bring a small version home if you don't have the space to do something bigger. Well, I really appreciate you showing us around your rock crevice mixture garden. It's awesome. I appreciate you guys coming out. 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