tabletop rock garden

All this winter snow and cold has got me dreaming of warmer days and beautiful gardens. And I can't think of any gardens more beautiful than the raised beds and tabletop landscapes designed and maintained by my friend Jerry Kral in his Zone 6, Rochester, NY property.

A master gardener and past president of the American Conifer Society, Kral's newest addition is a gigantic, raised-bed rock garden. (Once he filled up his own yard with raised beds, terraces and a grotto filled with rare and unusual conifers and other plants drooled over by the likes of plant gurus Michael Dirr and Allan Armitage), he bought the property next door and has completely filled it, too. Now, in the place of what used to be all lawn now sits "tabletop rock gardens" featuring miniature conifers and other alpine plants growing amongst the porous lava rocks placed atop huge "tables" made out of neolithic-looking stone slabs.

Here's the tour of it I took this past fall: 

Check it out just for the pure, unadulterated plant porn it is. Or if you're looking for ideas on how to add stone to your garden. Or if you're a cold-climate gardener like me and you're looking for rock garden plants that can take the cold.

"If you were to tabulate the amount of time I spend maintaining this compared to maintaining a lawn, there’s really not much difference," says Jerry. "And it’s a heck of a lot more interesting than just whipping back and forth on a lawn."

As you can see in the picture below, Jerry likes to create what he calls "tabletop rock gardens" out of two vertical slabs of stone topped by another slab, forming a stone table. Atop the "table" here is a bed of reddish lava rock hosting an assortment of cold-hardy, miniature conifers and alpine plants.

"I saw this in the Czech Republic when we were there a couple summers ago," he says. "They had these beautiful rock gardens, but they had theirs on metal posts. I decided, 'Why use metal posts when I can use vertical slabs of stone?' " The naturalistic effect, I think, is nothing less than stunning – and it's a great space-saver if you don't have a lot of land.

You can get the stones from your local landscaping supply place that sells stone, says Jerry. "But you have to be pretty strong. Some of those slabs have to weigh about 200 to 300 pounds, so you have to know what you’re doing."

Jerry loves the lava stone because it wicks away moisture, "so very quickly you get beautiful colonies of moss and lichens … It looks like it’s been there forever."

The whole garden freezes solid in the winter, so Jerry has to select his plants carefully. They must be hardy to Zone 3, at least for his Zone 6 garden.

Here's the miniature 'Hedgehog' juniper  he chose: "It grows about an inch a year, but can be pruned if it gets too big."

And here's a little Norway spruce called 'Stoner' … "Probably because it looks whacked out," jokes Jerry.

Then there's this ice plant (it has yellow flowers when in bloom), "which is doing VERY well," notes Jerry.

And this is a little tiny mugo pine called Little Needle  (or was it Little Leaf? I don't remember which … )

Well, I've got a lot more to come on Jerry's gardens from my tour this past fall. Stay tuned and keep dreaming of spring!