Ballast

Ballast

Yesterday I went to the rock store for the first time in a long time. I’ve used rock products around the property for a number of purposes over the past few years. I first bought a truckload of mixed size river rock of assorted coloration. I remember well thinking that I was smart to lay down a blue tarp on my upper driveway on which to have the rock dumped. Let’s put it this way, four years later, that smart move still shows up as a spackling of bits of bright blue tarp imbedded in my driveway concrete. Such is the power of rock dropped from a dump truck onto another hard surface. I had bought the rock to spread on the area alongside the house in front of the living room windows. This was not such a novel idea since the previous owners had done the same in the slightly smaller area in front of the kitchen windows. What I will say is that it was a good investment in that the rock has held up as well as it was supposed to and that area requires minimal maintenance from weeding or other landscaping.

The biggest use of rock has been to use pea gravel sized river rock for the area of the Cecil Garden, the Betty Garden and all around the garage, with stepping stones aesthetically and pragmatically placed as needed. Its a nice look that I, once again, did not invent, but I already had in the path that runs around the lower part of the house down the hillside on wither side. I have supplemented that gravel with a good deal more of the stuff over the years just to keep it robust as pea gravel has a way of disappearing into the surrounding landscape and leaving bare spots here and there if you are not attentive to replenishing it occasionally. The one thing I have pretty much decided based on my experience is that installing weed barrier sheathing is a waste of time, effort and money. That stuff is hard to put down with the small pinning stakes always dislodging themselves in inconvenient ways, provides only moderate weed protection (they always get through eventually), and then manages to stick up at inconvenient places requiring surgical removal that never seems to end. I like the look of pea gravel paths, but I only use them next to the house and garage and prefer to use the more rustic decomposed granite (DG) on pathways through the garden because they are easier to maintain and look a bit more at one with nature.

When I redid the cactus and succulent gardens on the northeast side of the house last year, including my favorite cactus knoll that I see from my office window, I went a slightly different route. River stone and pea gravel tend to move around a bit more than one likes, but rough gravel stands to stay put better. I bought several different colors of rough gravel and used them in those beds to lay down instead of bark mulch, which is what I tend to use in all my other garden beds. Bark mulch (I tend to use medium size) is very handy as it is easy to lay down and conforms to the area easily, looking both natural and yet somehow refined and purposeful. It does grow tired over time and need to be replenished in ways that rough gravel does not. The gravel on the cactus know that I am staring at right now looks as fresh and new as when I put it down last year. It succeeds without weed barrier to keep the weeds to a bare minimum and defines the plantings very succinctly. It too looks natural, but it has the advantage of looking even more sophisticated than the bark much looks, so it has been a nice change of pace for those beds. It comes in many different colors and all I can say is that the color you chose will determine the degree to which it looks natural versus contrived. I used a grey gravel around my propane tank to reassure the Cal Fire people that I was serious about keeping vegetation away from the tank. I sued more of a subtle variegated color rock on the cactus knoll that makes it look like its out in the Sonoran Desert.

I have also used larger river rocks as borders. They already existed in black at the edge of my driveway and I liked the look, so I used more of them around my patio and spa area, around some of the citrus trees in the Cecil garden to create a more natural edge to complement the pea gravel. My big edging project came last year when I purchased about four yards of large (5-8”) black La Paz river rock. It got delivered in a wire cage pallet and I then went about trenching all along the road in the front of the house, laying down these 10-20 pound rocks along the edge of the pavement, creating a very natural and distinctive edging to my property. It allowed me to define two pathway entry points that run toward my play area and I think it makes my property somewhat unique. While I got the idea from the driveway, I have yet to see anyone else in our neighborhood using this simple and cost-effective technique. Most often they install a curb of some sort ranging from unattractive asphalt to attractive, but somewhat too manicured looking mortared rock. The mortared rock can take the form of a slanted edging that both looks solid and can still be parked upon if necessary all the way to a jagged-edged approach that is just one step shy of imbedding broken glass in the top of a perimeter wall. I prefer my softer, more natural approach and I use bags of tiny black gravel to further soften the boundary between the stones and the asphalt, creating a seamless look that has the added benefit of being easily removed and replaced should any road work need to be done to resurface the road (something I suspect will happen this summer).

I have used river stones of varying size for yet another purpose around the property. I’ve now counted and determined that I have exactly 132 pots of various sizes on the property. They are almost all designed to allow water to exit at the bottom through a hole or two. Drainage is an important part of keeping plants in pots healthy because no one likes soggy roots. Naturally, the best way to promote good drainage is to put rocks in the bottom of the pots either over the naked drain holes or once the holes have been covered by small screens which are purchased specifically for that purpose (all of my bonsai pots have such screens, but larger pots seem to need those less). When I put the large pots down on my play area, I did not want real plantings in them, but rather bought metal succulent and cactus plants to make the area look more like a miniature golf course. It took a lot of river rock to fill up some of those larger pots, but they have done well in terms of keeping the weeds out, anchoring the artificial plants, and and keeping the pots where they are supposed to be. In essence, they have performed the function of ballast for those posts. In fact, they are so heavy that it is almost impossible to move the pots anywhere.

That made me realize that with the new pots I just bought on my pot sortie to Planter Paradise, I could use some ballast in those particular pots. The ones down by the driveway are effectively entry stanchions that I do not want anyone moving, so they each got 100 pounds of small river sones in them to insure their steadfastness. The big decorative jar (probably 4.5 feet high) got 150 pounds of rock in it since the bamboo poles that are lodged in it seem to catch the wind and brought about the demise of its unweighted predecessor. Even at Planter Paradise discount pot pricing, I do not anticipate to keep replacing these pots, so a little ballast should go a long way and I’m always happy to find another use for rocks on my boulder-strewn hillside.