Bulbaholic did a very good blog on this subject, copy and paste the link

http://www.growsonyou.com/bulbaholic/blog/18069-bulbaholics-way-of-building-a-rockery

I can't give you any help but I'm sure others including Bulba will give you the advice you are after.

This is how I built one of our Rock gardens,
http://www.growsonyou.com/Owdboggy/blog/12062-a-job-too-far

I did a raised bed with rocks
dont know how to paste the link sorry.

the best advice for the plants is check how vigourous they are and leave plenty of space between the plants.

And make sure it is a sunny area.

thats why mine ended up in a raised bed that was built originally as a flower bed. the only really sunny spot in the back garden.

Well having finally made the decision to remove an extremely large tree that had ended up putting most of our garden in shade we are looking forward to our alpines doing much better in the coming year!

Thanks for all the advice, my only problem is that it is a
shady spot thats one reason why I would like to make some sort of a feature of it, I'll keep looking in my books
and on the forum, something to study for spring.

You can certainly create a rockery and have pretty, small plants in it just not alpines. Look for plants that do well in shady conditions.