No question: a garden is a lot of work - especially in autumn, when the leaves on the trees turn so wonderfully colorful and fall onto the beds. Sometimes it can be left there as winter protection, but in the rock garden you should remove the old and wet leaves regularly.
How to remove leaves in the rock garden?
To effectively remove leaves in the rock garden, it is best to use a brush broom or stretch a fine-mesh net over the area in good time before the leaves fall. Avoid leaf blowers to avoid damaging smaller stones and animal inhabitants. Evergreen trees also reduce leaf fall.
Always remove leaves from rock garden plants that are sensitive to moisture
Most plants in the rock garden are very sensitive to moisture, which is why leaving the autumn leaves lying around is not a good idea. In particular, sensitive plants such as silverwort or edelweiss begin to rot under the damp cover, so that the plants in your rock garden are likely to quickly disappear.
Suitable methods for autumn foliage removal
Now removing possibly wet and therefore sticky leaves, especially smaller stones or pebbles, is not an easy matter. It is better not to use a leaf blower in the stone or gravel garden: in the end the stones will fly around and destroy the painstakingly arranged ensemble. In addition, a leaf blower not only blows away leaves and stones, but also many of the small and endangered animal species that usually live in a rock garden. It is therefore better to use old-fashioned methods, such as a brushwood broom. Here, willow or birch branches are tied into a broom that easily removes all leaves.
Prevention is better than cleanup: Cast a net
Now this manual removal of the leaves in larger rock gardens is quite a lot of work. To avoid this, you can simply use this tried and tested trick: stretch a fine-mesh net over the entire area in good time before the leaves begin to fall. From there you can simply remove the collected leaves with a broom or clear them away together with the net. However, the following also applies here: collected leaves must be removed regularly.
Evergreen deciduous and coniferous trees reduce leaf fall
To make your work easier, you can of course also prevent leaf fall by planting appropriate evergreen species. There are a number of suitable deciduous and coniferous trees for the rock garden, all of which are dwarf in growth.
Suitable conifers for the rock garden:
- Dwarf Balsam Fir
- Dwarf mussel cypress
- Dwarf columnar juniper
- Dwarf Bluecedar Juniper
- Hedgehog spruce
- Dwarf Snakeskin Pine
- Dwarf mountain pine
- Dwarf Hoe Pine
- Dwarf boxwood
Tip
A layer of fir or spruce twigs that provides protection in winter is also not advisable in the rock garden for the same reasons as described above.
