Creating a rock garden - 25 excellent examples of garden design

Accents in the garden create a particularly interesting atmosphere and create eye-catchers that attract everyone's attention. Rock gardens are often used for this purpose. The reason for this is not only the colorful variety of plants that are offered for such garden design. The plant species are also quite easy to care for and have no special needs, which is why rock gardens are also wonderfully suitable for busy hobby gardeners. You want oneCreate a rock garden? We'll show you 25 inspiring examples of how to create an attractiveGarden designcan implement with stones. Use any types and sizes of stones for a particularly natural look.

Creating a rock garden – which garden is suitable for this?

Not every terrain offers the necessary conditions for creating a rock garden. Sunny gardens facing south or east can be perfectly transformed into an exotic paradise with stones and alpine plants. If you dream of a Feng Shui-style garden, the first thing you have to do is choose the right soil. Sandy soil is optimal, but if you have oneCreate a rock gardenIf you want, you can also cover the floor with pebbles. Decorate the garden with large stones such as granite or basalt - you can use these to frame the lawn, place next to the staircase or bed in the garden. Be careful – large stones need to be stable to avoid injuries and accidents.

Creating a rock garden – which plants are suitable for it?

Evergreen alpine plants or annual plants are perfect for theRock gardensuitable. Hardy conifers, hanging willows and nesting spruces attract attention and give the garden a natural look. Perennials such as edelweiss, carnation or alpine carnation can be combined with grasses and fit perfectly into the overall picture. If you have oneCreate a rock gardenIf you would like to, seek advice from your local flower market so that you can choose the right plants and flowers for your region.

A small rock garden with a waterfall

A stone bed is particularly easy to create along or directly next to a pond. Since a natural-looking garden pond is already framed with river stones, these can be used perfectly as a basis or starting point. There are no special rules here. You can even experiment with the distribution of the stones, swapping them out as you see fit until you get a result that suits your needs.

Pebbles for the rock garden

When you create a rock garden, you can create a flat area like this. Small slopes can also be built just as easily or existing slopes can be used. Especially if you also plant ground cover plants, their roots will quickly form protection against landslides. Choose drought-loving plants because when watered, water will run down the slope more quickly than seep into the ground.

Outdoor seating with a beautiful view

Feel free to use natural stone slabs in your stone garden and simply build a terrace into which you can also integrate the plants. Wider joints are simply planted with flowering ground cover plants or, in a shady location, with moss. Purple nuances and some grasses on the edge create a Mediterranean atmosphere. You can create seating areas using larger stones, which adapt much better to your self-designed surroundings than many pieces of garden furniture.

Stones like basalt and granite are perfect for the garden

Large stones and rocks break up the environment and are suitable for a variety of landscaping. You can highlight these rocks by landscaping the rest of the beds with ordinary soil, bark mulch or turf. Alternatively, the individual beds can be filled with river stones and pebbles, as well as a few plants here and there, giving the impression that you are somewhere in the great outdoors and not in a private garden.

Garden on several levels - stones as an accent

Use large stones either as a background for lower plant species or vice versa – as a foreground for taller plants. The natural stones used should not all be the same size. A combination of different sizes is better. If you can't imagine what the best quantity and distribution would be, sketch your bed and draw the individual elements into it. Garden planners, some of whom are available free of charge, can also prove helpful. You can also find some lists of such planners on our site.

The stones frame the lawn

If you would like to do without the artificial and unnatural-looking border, you can use natural stones of any size instead. If you create a rock garden either way, you can use them for practical purposes. However, if these are lined up close together and perfectly between the bed and the lawn, you will get a more artificial effect. Instead, it is better to just distribute a few types of stone here and there along the border, ideally in such a way that they partially cover the bed and lawn, as if they had fallen onto these areas by themselves and completely involuntarily.

Gabion in the allotment garden

Gabions are also an attractive idea for modern gardens. The grids filled with stones give you an original vertical rock garden design and can also serve as a supporting wall for slopes or simply as a divider between different areas. Continue the stone design in the bed above or create a contrast by making the bed just out of soil and plants or with a simple lawn. Ornamental grasses are again a suitable plant species, but trees are also very attractive.

Cozy seating area with outdoor fire pit

The stones as decoration

House on a hillside – with a rock garden

Evergreen and hardy plants and shrubs in the rock garden

Rock garden with bench – practical and original

Waterfall with stones attracts birds and insects

Pebble stones visually separate the garden from the terrace

Japanese style garden - the pebbles symbolize the river

Allotment garden decorated with river stones

Rock garden on the hillside