Crevice Garden

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Next to the wall at the bottom of the side lawn was an area of gravel. We have no idea why the wall is there. We thought that it might have been part of the original garden when this was part of the property of a big house, but the base of the wall is modern ‘breeze’ block so it cannot be that old.
We decided that as this was probably the sunniest part of that side of the garden that it was a good place to build a Crevice garden.
Crevice gardens are a good way of growing alpine plants and we had brought a fair few with us.
The area was covered in gravel, surrounded by a rotten wooden edging. When I scraped back the gravel there was a sheet of plastic underneath. Under the plastic it was mostly brick rubble.

The wooden edging was set in concrete and it took some digging out.

When we moved in we found a large stack of house bricks, presumably left over from building the Bungalow. I used them to circle the area.

We thought it looked better with the front of the circle lower than the sides.

We had a number of pieces of paving slabs which are ideal for making a crevice garden.

These were place up right and slightly buried.

Each row is 2 to 3 inches away from the previous one. They ought really to be closer but over the years we have found that smaller gaps are harder to plant up and even harder to weed.

A few more rows added.

That is as many rows as could be fitted into the space.

I filled the gaps with a mixture of top soil, potting compost and fine grit

Once the soil had settled I planted some of our alpines.
I replaced the gravel on top and over the circle.

After a few weeks it looked quite good.

• 3 Oct, 2020
• 5 likes

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