Cottage Rock Garden
My choice of winner for an informal Best Cottage Rock Garden Ever award will shock you. My (make-believe) award is not going to some gorgeous alpine creation set in a raised bed with little stones jutting out, and wave upon wave of colour drawing the eye each spring. No, this is an ordinary, real rock garden, photos from which I am going to share with you, and it is a garden featuring only a few big rocks. Yet in my view, it is certainly in the Best Ever category.
I was out for a stroll in Gimli, Manitoba on a sunny afternoon when I passed by a ranch-style cottage, or possibly it is someone’s year-round home. It had a “rock bed” in the front, consisting of a layer of gravel and six large rocks resting on top of the gravel bed, plus a slab of driftwood, an old farm implement nested in there, and a few plants. I chuckled and thought, “Now, that’s what I call a rock garden,” and walked on by, thinking, “what an easy care garden.” Then I felt compelled to stop and take a really good look at that rock garden. I noticed that the rocks – good sized chunks of granite – were truly gorgeous specimens. Texture, lines , colour, distinctive markings – everything about these rocks made me think someone had taken trouble to bring these here. And as I looked, I recalled my canoeing days in earlier years, stomping in the back country over Pre-Cambrian Shield terrain, stepping over rocks like these, balancing and pushing off, and looking down at rugged bits of planet lying under my feet.
This rock garden in Gimli is truly a spare time gardener’s delight. There’s no need to haul soil to the backyard in spring. There’s nothing to hurry-up-and-plant-before-the-roots-dry-out, no use for a trowel, no fawning, zero clipping, and no squishing of bugs. It’s just a simple, and genuine, rock garden.
But take a look at the rocks. They are simply gorgeous granite boulders. A garden with rocks like this makes the grade, in my view, for having stunning rock samples from the local terrain.
Hats off to the unknown rock gardeners at this lakeside dwelling, and bravo to them for building their own easy-on-the-eyes and easy-care cottage rock garden for their own enjoyment. I’m delighted to share their interesting collection of rocks with visitors to Cookie Buxton.
Photos and Text: NK
Copyright; NK/cookiebuxton.com
Photo location: Gimli, MB, Canada
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