now that's what you call a rockery!

Yep, that is quite something! :)

I don't know how high it is, but the steps were normal step-size, maybe the height can be guesstimated from the steps that can be seen.

What it is to be rich ... but then you'd need a team of profesisional gardeners, and where's the fun in that?

I visited a garden last year which was owned by very wealthy gardeners. Not stately but - very nice - if you catch my drift. In the yellow book, opened once in a while to the public for charity. They had a great conifer collection which was the diamond bullet for my own passion to start. But they had huge rocks that must have been craned in, slates that were 6-7' tall making water features and dynamic gullies. That is what you can do with money. All very well done, not showy.

that's the best kind of garden: done for oneself, not for show, or to impress other people. This garden would be very much a "show" piece, I think - doubt the owners did much other than give orders, and that at a distance.

That puts mine to shame.

ah, but you never ground the faces of the poor to make enough money to afford something on this scale, and the house and grounds to match!

My conscience is shiny clean! It still doesn't stop my rockery looking like a couple of pebbles on a slope!

do you have pics to back up your statement?? *s*

as for me, I've got some beach stones, don't know if I'll be able to weld them into "a rockery" sometime, or if it'd look any good if I could.

Yes, Fran, I could zoom outside with my camera right now, but since said the pebbles and slope are under about 70cms of snow, it isn't going to be very edifying! Even the car, parked out in the courtyard, is just one solid lump of white!

lol I didn't meant a pic right now - you've already shown us what lotsa snow looks like! There's no rush at all - just that I don't remember seeing any rockery pics on your photos (or maybe I just didn't notice them)

That's because it is totally taken over by the dreaded vinca, and I'm doing everything I can to transfer the "goodies" somewhere they can't be harmed, so I can use systemic weedkiller in the spring, and then re-plant. I've been trying to root out the vinca for years now, but it is very firmly entrenched, and this seems to be the only way forward.

it does sound invasive, and tenaciously so. vinca- isn'ta that periwinkle? something in my memory seems to link the two. Of course, I could go and check and find out!

Talking off the top of my head (and possibly out of the back of my neck); could you pot up the plants that you want to keep and thoroughly treat the ground, or strip it back to remove the top layer that presumably contains the pest's roots, or concrete over and then rebuild a raised rockery? No idea if any of these would do any good at all, but just chueck 'em in anyway

The problem is that the "rock" bits of the rockery are part of the mountain in places, and the periwinkle roots have insinuated themselves in to the underground fissures and crannies where I can't get at 'em. I tried last year to strip back the top layer of soil, but the vinca roots go incredibly deep, and are tangled with rosebush and cherry tree roots. It needs radical (pun) treatment, so come normal life again, I shall be swathing shrubs and any really big perennials I can't move in thick polythene, and getting in there with the weedkiller, or, failing that, the flamethrower!!!!

ooh, heck, moving bits of the mountain does sound like rather a big job! And sealing off the fissures sounds impossible; you can't seal 'em all and it'll find another way through.

I presume this is happens to all the other gardens around you (unless it's targeting you alone) - what are the others doing to combat it, if it happens to them, too?

You are joking, right, Fran? This is farming country. Nobody but us round here has gardens - tubs and windowboxes, yes, but Italian farmers really don't have the time or inclination to plant stuff other than crops into the ground. On top of that, the vinca was PLANTED by my idiotic vendor (English) to cover a difficult slope, it certainly doesn't grow in the wild.

shee, I suppose it's a bit late to get 'em to come back and "made good"? that's probably why it's extra-rampant - taken out of its natural environment and planted somewhere new, no natural checks and balances

I'll check and balance 'em all right, but it won't be natural, and it won't be pretty..........

so long as it's effective, and long-term effective - bad enough you having to do this once, don't want to have to do it on a regular basis ...

I should visit there, I was born in Dorking, but have never been there!

We went to the Youth Hostel a few times - trying to think of the name of it ... Tanner's Hatch. 3/4 mile walk from it to the car park, all uphill ... we had days out at Dorking, Poelsden Lacey and Leith Hill, do you know that one? we went to the folly on top - lol I thought they were saying "Leaf Hill", so much for cockney accent!

The house is huge, but I'm really n ot much into the inside of buildings; oh, there's a room, and there's another one ... the grounds were much better; got some more pics somewhere, some of them almost useable!