I hope you'll indulge me with a place to talk about my rock garden/semp bed I named Little Rock. It is rapidly evolving and I can't resist taking pictures and need a place to share them!
The area (I finally measured it) is about 7 feet long, 13 inches wide at the widest and 7 inches at the narrow end. It abuts a brick wall and is next to a tiny sidewalk. The part right up by the wall often doesn't receive rainfall.
When I moved in last spring, this area was growing ditch lilies (H. fulva I believe they are) which will grow anywhere, and also lots of couch grass which is a nasty character that has hard-gripping root networks sometimes a foot or more deep.
In the area that became Little Rock, that grass was also rooting into the mortar of the brick wall.
I first just tried to get just the grass out but the lilies looked extremely unsightly there after they bloomed so I decided it was a rock garden. I dug in and removed absolutely everything.
I happened to acquire some NOID semps and this was the place to plant them. I also at some point bought a very small container that had three varieties of semps in it, one Green Wheel, one Oddity, and one that will forever be a NOID. Some of that went into Little Rock as well.
Here is this morning's view of Little Rock, taken from the wide end, which is the best angle for it:
I used creeping jenny as a "between rocks and semps" groundcover, which was not a great choice as it likes much more water than it will get here. But it works okay for now. It will be replaced with more xeric plantings over time.
The semps I planted here, two NOIDs and some of the Green Wheel, are *really* liking the territory! and they are all making offsets. I trimmed some of the creeping jenny from around the Green Wheel and found it had already rooted an offset under one frond.
I got advice to move some rocks away from these plants to give them more room to root in:
And as I was working I discovered several other offsets developing here and there:
I planted some perennial Blue Flax at the narrow end, and there's a teeny start of thyme next to it. These are much better suited to the area than the creeping jenny is, so it will be fun to find some other replacements as time goes on.
The little fence you can sort of see in some of the pictures is made from bamboo stakes cut short, and garden tie tape (that stretchy plastic kind) woven in and tied as cross pieces. I had to do that to alert the lawn guys not to blow there, not to squish the plants with the mower wheels, etc.
At the wide end, I put a clay pot angled with creeping jenny spilling out -- and a couple semps behind the pot. (That's visible in the first photo I think.) That makes a nice little spot. I'll have to find something else to spill from the pot maybe.
