Help needed for rocky garden areas

[Bravo35223]

I am new to gardening and any help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.

I live in Birmingham AL on a rocky hilltop. Literally. My back yard has large rock boulder extrusions that protrude out from the surrounding soil. Both areas described below get approximately 5 hours of direct sunlight per day and 4 hours of partial sunlight. The soil is fairly black/sandy - not clay, which is common here.

I have two things I'd like to accomplish:

1) Area One is a series of boulder's/ridges that have light soil on them. Because of the soil, any/all weeds that thrive under such conditions love it here. The area looks rotten and its hard to maintain. I've been spraying Round Up on this area 2-3X per year just to keep the weeds down.

I think this area could be quite beautiful with flowers growing from it. The soil depth is 2-3 inches. What do you recommend?

2) Area Two is my patio area. The tops of large boulders have small depressions where rainwater accumulates. In some of these depressions, soil accumulates and weeds grow. The typical size of a depression is about 12-18 long and 4-6 wide and about 2-3 inches deep. I'd like to put flowers in these rock depressions as I believe it would be a beautiful contrast between the flowers and surrounding boulders. Also, it would keep the misquitos down because I would not have standing water in these areas after rainfall.

PLEASE Help and THANKS for your assistance...

[The Helpful Gardener]

Easy solutions and the same one for both areas. Look for rock garden plants and alpines that would thrive in these rocky sandy areas. Sedums spring to mind; there are loads of creeping forms like S. spurium, S. cauticola, S. acre and dozens more. You could do a garden in this genus alone and get a great look, and it would be no maintenance. Try Delospermas as well; they look like sedums, but get a daisy-like flower. Sempervivums (Hens and chicks) would be another good bet there. Best of all these are all succulents, so you'll never have to water; they store their own!

Scott

[Guest]

Thank You!

I am off to Home Depot this weekend to give it a go....

I'll let you know how it comes out and thank you again for your help...

[petunialover]

please send me a few of your interesting rocks, I love to garden around them, er have flat/boring here.

PL

[The Helpful Gardener]

Home Cheapo will have a few sedums, but you should hit a garden center for a real selection of plants. The Big Boxes are okay if you need a lot of one bread and butter plant, but unless we support independent garden centers, we will lose the places where you can get lots of choices and real information that will give our gardens the look we want...