Looking to enhance the look of your rockery will some well-placed plants? Gardeners can sometimes feel stymied by the seemingly limited space that a rockery provides them, but rockeries are able to host a variety of beautiful and unique plants.
For the avid gardener and beginner alike, this list of our favorite rockery plants will help you to create the look and feel that you have been hoping for while increasing your home value. Our suggestions are all plants that won’t be bothered by the cramped space; rather, they will thrive amongst the stones, providing a beauty that could not be achieved by a normal garden!
Ground Covers:
Ground cover plants are those that grow low and dense close to the ground. This makes it difficult for weeds and other invasive plants to weasel their way into the area. These plants are excellent choices for rockeries as they are hardy and unbothered by limited space—in fact, they thrive in difficult conditions!
Woolly Yarrow:
This beautiful, bright yellow, flowering ground cover blooms mid to late summer. It requires very little care and loves hot sunny spaces that would usually wither other less hardy plants. This ground cover fans out 9-12 inches in diameter, and it may grow up to 12 inches tall.
Rock Cress:
This ground-hugging plant comes in a variety of beautiful colors. White, pink, rose, mauve, and lavender are all popular color choices. This plant is a useful ground cover for rockeries that have a mixture of sun and partial shade areas, as it can grow in any condition and any soil. This ensures a beautiful, even covering for your rockery area.
This plant requires very little care, and will only need to be watered in the very hottest and driest of months. It grows 5 inches in height and blooms from mid to late spring. Not only this, but it has a lovely scent.
Mount Atlas Daisy:
This gorgeous little white-flowered plant makes an excellent and hardy ground cover. It requires very little maintenance and may be allowed to grow freely. In very warm weather, it may require some watering.
The small, delicate landscaping flowers bloom on stalks that may reach between 8-10 inches in height. It spreads up to 8 inches and blooms from mid to late spring.
Silver Mound Sage:
This fragrant, silvery ground cover is an excellent choice for very dry conditions. It’s tiny yellow landscaping flowers bloom in late summer to early fall. It has a widespread, up 18 inches, and may grow to a height of 10 inches.
Barren Strawberry:
This pretty ground cover is able to spread rapidly across an area. It produces small bright yellow landscaping flowers in the spring, and small inedible, but charmingly pretty, fruit. Its leaves much resemble those of a regular strawberry plant and grow to a height of 7-10 inches. This plant will thrive in sunny areas but may require watering during dry spells.
Perennials:
For those that do not have the time or energy to replant each spring, perennials are a good choice for low maintenance, yet beautiful, rockery. Perennials are plants that bloom throughout the warm months, dying back in fall and winter. They live for three years or more, returning larger and more beautiful each spring.
Iberis:
This beautiful plant produces white blooms in the spring, reaching a height of 8-10 inches while spreading up to 20 inches in diameter once fully grown. This plant does best in well-draining soil but otherwise requires very little in order to thrive.
Hosta:
Hostas are one of the most common and popular perennials, partially because of their wide variety of colors and sizes, but also because they are one of the easiest plants to care for. They flourish best in areas that are rich in rainfall and prefer partial to full shade.
Hostas may grow up to 3 feet or more in height and can spread throughout whatever space they are given. Some varieties of hosta are very small and come in colors that vary from variegated white and emerald to blue-gray and chartreuse. Because of this, it can be easily incorporated into virtually any landscaping style. Blossoms range from white and lavender, to purple and dark red.
Aven:
Aven is a brightly colored flower that flourishes best in sunny areas with rich, well-draining soil. It grows up between 6-24 inches in height, spreading to a width of 8 inches to 2 feet, depending on how much room it is given to grow. This low maintenance plant produces cheery yellow and white landscaping flowers.
Designing a beautiful yard space can seem a daunting task, but thankfully, you have excellent teams available to help you make the tough choices. While some people imagine that rockeries and rock retaining walls will remove the possibility of having lush and flowering lawn areas, as we have just demonstrated, this does not have to be the case!
If you are considering redesigning or simply sprucing up your yard space, contact our team of professionals for free consultation. You will be surprised and delighted at the wide range of styles and choices you will have available to you! Together, let us give you the yard you did not know you even wanted!