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Scree Beds

© Michael Campbell

I have been telling you in the last few articles about plants growing in scree beds. So now I want to tell you how the beds were made. This will come as something of a surprise to most of you and will definitely upset the purists. Let me start at the beginning. Where my scree beds are was once a beautiful lawn that never failed to draw comment from the general public, One person even came into the garden to feel if the grass was real, thinking that it might be artificial. But do you think that I could keep the lawn in that condition.? No! Felines from all over the neighbourhood used to come and cavort on the lawn at night, and leave their little trademarks .Of course I was not aware of anything until small yellow patches appeared all over my beautiful grass I tried every known method to eradicate the problem but to no avail. At the same time every spare patch in the garden was filled with alpines in pots begging for a space to be planted out. .So I came up with the bright idea: why struggle with a lawn and with alpines in pots, when I could solve both problems at once? Plant the alpines where the lawn was .So without further thought or discussion the task was put in hand.

This is a picture showing part of the lawn before I started the scree bed.

THE END OF THE LAWN.

It so happened that it was the end of October and the leaves were coming down good and fast after some dry and sunny autumn weather. A workman from the local council was busy gathering up the leaves and wheeling them a long distance to dump in the forest. I stopped him and told him that there was an easy way to do the job. Just dump the leaves on my lawn. He looked a little surprised but duly obeyed, and for the next two days he dumped 130 barrows of leaves on my lawn. By this time the leaves were 18 inches high all over the lawn, so it was time for the second part of the plan.

NOW THE HARD WORK.

Twenty-five tons of pea shingle 6mm down was delivered the next morning. Now it was time for me to show my agility with the wheelbarrow. Would you believe that there are 175 barrows in 25 ton of shingle? After a suitable soothing cream had been applied to the aching muscles and the feet spent a few hours in the spa, it was time to continue. The leaves had been spread on top of the grass and the pea shingle spread on top of the leaves, so now the whole concoction was about 15 inches higher than the path and had to be given time to settle. That give me time to plan what to plant, and where. I also had to locate stones, to stop the shingle from spilling out unto the path.This part was easily accomplished, as a friend had a stone wall that he wanted removed, but did you ever try to move a stone wall in the back of a car? Five days and 30 round trips later the task was finally complete.

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