Alpine hill in the country (18 photos): the best ideas of landscape design
Content
The courtyard area of a summer cottage or a country cottage is a place of relaxation, meetings with friends, picnics and a grill menu in the warm months, emerald greenery and aromas. Therefore, the desire of a zealous owner is a bright colorful zone, preferably with an amazing landscape design. However, not everyone has the opportunity to invite to create a designer rock garden, rockery, flower beds and rabatok. But the arrangement of the Alpine slide with your own hands is a completely feasible, interesting, intriguing, exciting task! The main thing is compliance with some rules and a sense of beauty!
Alpine hill: the basics of the concept, or significant assistance in the arrangement
The opportunity to understand how to make an alpine hill correctly is an awareness of its “philosophical” beginning, impudent, bright and bold. Such an element of landscape design came to us in the 18th century, a little earlier - to Europe, from Japan. The small area of the endless islands lost in the ocean made the Japanese appreciate the beauty of nature in all its manifestations. It was they who invented the rock garden several thousand years ago in order to be able to admire green plants, colorful flowers, evergreen shrubs, using only a couple of square meters of land. Improving the arrangement of the rock garden can go on for more than a year, becoming from year to year more interesting, more luxurious in terms of the selection of flowering plants, more harmonious. And it seems that an awl-shaped phlox, covered with yellow moss, always grew on this mini-rock, decorated it with edelweiss and stone roses, enchanted with a riot of colors lumbago, aquilegia, crocus and others.
A spectacular alpine slide in the country is not only the harmony between the asymmetry of the stones and their shade, perennial and annual flowers, herbs, shrubs, but also certain features of the creation of the rock garden. It is a mountain in miniature, therefore, for any rock garden, a height of 1-3 meters is acceptable, depending on the available space. The Alpine hill has 3 distinct areas: the sole, slopes and the peak. And the question of how to make an alpine hill is not worth it if you combine the harmony of living plants and stones with the rules for arranging a rock garden into one constructive beginning.
Rock garden, or TOP-5 construction rules
Big or small alpine slide - you decide. But before you start laying the first boulder stone, it is worthwhile to understand what kind of magic on the site takes time. It can’t be created in a couple of days, as you might have expected from the beginning. The best moment to create a rock garden is late autumn. At this time, a form will be created, stones will be picked up and stacked, a place selected for evergreen shrubs (if they are appropriate). Early spring is suitable for planting perennial plants, in May it is better to start creating a fairy tale from annual plants.
Landscaping with stones and plants is the observance of several standard rules. They will allow you to create such a landscape element that you dreamed about, while it will be harmonious in all its subtleties and details.
5 basic rules for equipping an alpine hill:
- Choosing a site for rock garden in the yard.Do not forget that plants need natural light, so an alpine slide in the shade is not your option. Unless, of course, you plan to "observe" the beauty of the stones. The area should be sufficient to make it convenient to admire the creation of your own hands, care for plants, water and feed greens, weeds;
- Consideration of landscape features. Natural “blemishes” of the territory can serve precisely that stylish “chip” around which the whole composition will be built. And you will learn that the “channel”, “rock”, “wall” are the types of alpine hills, so named by their functional “structure” by professional designers;
- Drainage preparation. Many of those who create a rock garden with their own hands ignore this rule. However, it is worth remembering that most of the plants on the Alpine hill are ground cover or bulbous, evergreen, that is, those for which stagnation of water is unacceptable. And it is inevitable, because the hill has a lot of grooves and protrusions, gorges and hollows. Only well-designed drainage will save the plants from flooding and excessive moisture. It is easy and simple to create, for this it is necessary to delve into the soil by 30 cm, to create layers of gravel (broken construction waste), coarse sand, and earth. Each layer must be well compacted and watered. Stacking stones is worth only on such a strong, reliable, optimal “pillow” for plants;
- Proper stacking of stones. For rock gardens, you can choose both small and large stones, stones of medium size. The main rule is the repetition of a mountain from the Alps, the stone blocks of which seem to “grow” from the bowels of the earth, forming a single monolithic form. The main idea here is the naturalness of boulders protruding from the ground, so it is customary to frame the lower tiers of the hill with more massive and bulky stones, which should be buried in the ground by half or a third. On the slopes of the rock garden you can "scatter" in a chaotic, but having a common idea and a unifying beginning, order smaller stones. The top of the rock garden should be crowned with a large stone, but correctly calculate that your chosen boulder does not fill up the whole composition;
- Shrink time. Naturally, after the alpine hill is recreated with our own efforts, I would like to quickly decorate it with the acquired plants and fully appreciate the beauty of my work. But do not rush, be sure to give time for shrinkage to your boulder stones, at least 2-3 weeks. Only then will the planted plants feel reliable, confident, delight with brilliant greenery, an abundance of flowers and aromas.
“Alps” and water: a harmonious tandem of the elements of nature
Very unusual in the garden area looks alpine slide with a waterfall. To create such a waterfall with your own hands is as simple and easy as making a rock garden. Particular attention will need to be paid to the reservoir located at the bottom of your waterfall. To do this, you will have to dig a recess, cover it with a plastic film (special, with a maximum thickness), the water into which will be collected and circulated using a pump. The only "minus" of a decorative reservoir - the need to drain the water for the winter.
An independent device of a waterfall is not only a technical part, but also a decorative one. Special water plants and greens will create a special mood in the rock garden, will attract the attention of family members and each guest to this landscape unit. Rock garden with a waterfall in the form of ledges - a creative solution in case the area allows. Such a territory can become not only the main decor element of your garden, adjoining territory, but also a recreation area, picnics, all kinds of festivities in nature.
To create a small pond in rock gardens, you can use the tools at hand. For example, an old large pot. It will need to be decoded and filled with water.This is an original and slightly authentic option, while requiring a minimum of effort and financial cost. It is possible to organize such an element of water element at the moment when the rock garden already exists: it is enough to choose a small or large depression with a minimum of plants and carefully place a container in it. Fill with water, let duckweed and stones, the flowers will merge in a single rush with the living water of a pond!
The main idea of the waterfall is a concrete foundation with the arrangement of complex engineering systems and communications for supplying, cleaning, filtering, replacing water. This option is most acceptable for suburban cottages at the time of their design, because such an alpine hill already requires a completely different approach, it is better to entrust it to professionals.
Rock garden flowers, or following logic and impeccable taste
So, the alpine slide in your garden is a miniature of the Alps and their lawns. Where did you see large-sized trees and dense plantations on alpine landscapes? That's right, they did not see it, because the decoration of the gentle slopes of the Alps is creeping plants, mosses and lichens, ground cover or bright flowers of small height, dwarfs.
Therefore, if your site allows, and you want to recreate on it a piece of birch grove, and mixed forest, and an impenetrable spruce in the Russian style, do it on the periphery of the site, and leave the central part in the alpine hill so that it shines on its territory during all the glory. At the same time, select the following plants for her:
- ground cover: mosses, stonecrops, lichens. They can decorate any tier of the hill, but it is worth remembering that they can be "lost" among other plants. Leave for them a certain zone, which will be expressed from early spring to the last days of autumn by emerald green, gray velvet, hoarfrost and other interesting shades (alissum rocky, Caucasian rezukha, blue fescue, felted wool);
- Younger of various shapes and colors. They will delight you with the splendor of buds and shades at the ends of the petals, in the middle of summer with interesting thick legs-inflorescences;
- perennial flowers of dwarf species. Phloxes, decorative violets, daffodils and even tulips are appropriate here;
- annual flowers. Petunia and gazania, salvia and ranunculus, tagetis and black breeders will create a mood for rock gardens, will become bright impregnations that can slightly “blur” green and bluish, lime and chocolate, and other other colors.
It is worth remembering that decoration with flowers on an alpine hill can take more than one season. The thing is that you will experiment with flowers, herbs, succulents. Indeed, only in this way, observing the growth of plants for a whole season, evaluating their growth rate and the splendor of color, the paints that they give, you can appreciate the general beauty of your own rock garden, the unity of style and direction.
In addition, their height will play a significant role in choosing plants for the next season. Examining the composition, noting the details, you will see that, for example, the host was planted very high and shade of saxifrage, and the thyme was stunted undergrowth and became a single purple background at the time of flowering. And there are dozens of such examples. Therefore, to create a harmonious alpine slide in which the colors, shades and midtones of the colors of burgundy and red, orange and lemon, olive and terracotta will be ideally combined, it is necessary to draw a small sketch with the names of the plants planted. Changing one flower to another for a couple of seasons, observing them, soon you will fill the entire rock garden with your favorite flowers and greenery, which form a harmonious beginning, the focal point of the unification of style.
