We finally did it- the quarter moon, a small quadrant patch that's been left for years unplanted mainly because I couldn't really figure out what to put in it is now 'done'. I finally figured out what to do with it after piecing together two things- the two stone/concrete planters pictured above, have spent a few years happily housing some succulents that thrived there on bare rock and a pinch of soil. Succulents it turns out are also Heidi's favorite plants, she always oohs over them at the nursery. It made sense then to just turn this whole area into a rock garden with succulents with the added practical addition of the woody herbs from the vegetable garden, that don't always make it through the winter. Two of them have done really well for a few years, the golden oregano and the lemon thyme and it hasn't escaped me that they thrive on the very edge of the vegetable beds which probably keeps their feet nice and dry. So dry + stony + succulents + woody herbs = mediterranean, desert-ish low maintenance rock garden.
Easier said than done, we had to dig fairly deep to make sure it was going to be well drained- this part of the garden gets a lot of water when it rains hard. Some frantic googling and reading to figure out how to prepare the bed for maximum drainage- and I wanted it to slope so- we had to wrap our brains around that. Then we had to get the stones and rocks. With Jim's expert guidance- I decided to mix 3 different kinds of stones to emulate the color variation that's occuring in the walls. It was no mean feat explaining to the nursery staff that we wanted to mix the stones and then only wanting 3/4 (not a half or a full yard which is 'how they do it"). Jim set the edging stones and I experimented with different recipes for mixing the stones- to get the 'look' right- its's amazing how difficult it is to get something to look 'natural'.
The planting was easy- herbs towards the front and succulents everywhere else. I echoed the range of color thats in the other beds a range between dark burgundy succulents and lemony lime greens. The result- it rocks- it finally finishes that part of the garden so at a macro level it works really well. What I didn't anticipate was the effectivenes of the scale- although I planned that it would be almost a minaiture garden, I didn't fully appreciate how attractive this would be and how it slows you down and makes you take it in more closely.
