Damp Rock Gardens

Damp Rock Gardens

27 Oct

Wolfram Kircher

ROCK GARDENS USUALLY remind us of dry plant communities rather than plants for moist or even wet sites. However, though the stone surfaces dry out quickly, they also reduce the substrate’s evaporation enormously. Just under the upper stone layers and in deep crevices there are often permanently moist or even damp conditions that can be recreated in a damp rock garden.

This natural rock formation along the shore of Lake Engstlensee in the Swiss Alps is a picturesque example of a natural damp rock garden.

Soldanella alpina blooms between remnants of the melting snow in soggy soil.

The silvery rosettes of Celmisia semicordata suggest a dry site, but they grow in the damp grassland of the Garvie Mountains in Southern New Zealand.

In the South African summer, the rock faces at Mont-Aux-Sources in the humid northern Drakensberg mountains are overrun with water. Here we find the succulent Crassula setulosa subsp. setulosa.

At the mouth of this stream only few plants were placed in the water, so that they do not hide the stone setting; the shore line, however, melts into dense vegetation.

Asplenium scolopendrium has settled behind this waterfall by way of its fine spores.

The smallest hardy water lily, Nymphaea tetragona

Androsace studiosorum ‘Alba‘ and Antennaria dioica ‘Alex Duguid’ on the crown of a rock garden water filter.

Diagram of type 1 rock garden water filter.

Construction of type 1 rock garden water filter.

Completed rock garden water filter, designed by Zdeněk Zvolánek.

Dodecatheon meadia growing on the completed rock garden filter.

Leontopodium alpinum growing on the completed rock garden filter.

Allium cernuum with Saxifraga aizoides growing on the completed rock garden filter.

Diagram of type 3 rock garden water filter.

Completed type 3 rock garden water filter.

Gentiana ‘Vierlanden‘ thrives on the rock garden filter, growing here between Antennaria sp. and Arabis bryoides.

This style of rock garden need not be naturalistic. A planted dry stone wall, made from Italian tufa, frames this natural swimming pool near Nürnberg, Germany. It is kept moist through a drip pipe, which runs along the wall crown.