How to make an alpine slide with your own hands in the country: device and diagrams

Many interesting ideas and concepts have been developed in landscape design. Many of them can be easily implemented on your site. One of the most beautiful ideas is the alpine slide. The graceful structure is a composition that reproduces a mountain landscape, stones of different sizes are scattered on its slope and various plants, shrubs, flowers are planted, and one or more stones flaunt above, like a cherry on a cake. Below you can find information on how to build a beautiful alpine slide on the site of a private house or summer cottage.

Optimal time to createconstruction

You can create an alpine slide with your own hands in a country house or plot at any time of the year, with the exception of winter.But landscape designers still recommend doing this fall, when there is still no rain or cold. Autumn construction has undeniable advantages: firstly, during the autumn and winter, the earth will settle and the voids that have arisen can be corrected with a new embankment of earth, and secondly, you can re-evaluate the composition and add new stones, remove or move old ones, and start planting of plants and flowers in spring.

Seat selection

Of course, you can put the structure with your own hands in any place convenient for you, but remember that the final result largely depends on the location chosen.

There are general rules for choosing a place for an alpine slide, which will allow you to achieve maximum beauty and convenience:

• An area with natural unevenness is ideal. Such a choice will help save energy and resources.
• It is best to choose a place that is clearly visible, for example, the center of the site. This will allow you to admire the rock garden in different parts of the garden from different angles.
• The slope should be placed on the south and east side so that the plants can receive the necessary sunlight and grow normally.
• The place must be protected from strong winds.
• You should not make a structure against the background of buildings, fences, barriers. The slide looks most profitable and interesting against the background of vegetation and trees.
• Various buildings, swimming pool, playground should not be located nearby.
• Also, do not place the composition next to trees, bright and lush flower beds, otherwise they will overshadow the rock garden and make it nondescript.
• It is necessary to provide for such a place to which you can make comfortable paths.

Advice! If you do not have the opportunity to place the slope on the south or east side, then plant shade and moisture-loving plants that will be comfortable on the north side.

What stones to use

Stones are the basis of the alpine slide. At first glance, it seems that everything is simple, but there are some peculiarities in terms of choosing the right material.

The following stones are ideal for the construction:

• tuff (travertine);

• granite;

• sandstone;

• limestone;

• gneiss;

• basalt.

But whatever stones from the above you decide to use, you need to remember the following recommendations:

• For the construction, you need to choose stones of different sizes in order to imitate natural naturalness.
• Also desirable are materials that are heterogeneous in structure and shape.
• Place stones securely so that they do not accidentally roll off.
• The stones can be quite heavy in weight, so when creating a structure, you need to call relatives or friends for help.
• Some landscape designers advise using the material of the same breed, which is as similar to each other as possible in color, thanks to this, natural naturalness can be achieved. But this is not at all necessary, you can focus on your taste.

Many people often have a question about where to get the stones to decorate the composition. You can buy stones in specialized hardware stores, markets, and garden centers.

What plants and flowers are suitable for an alpine slide

When choosing plants for decorating a composition with your own hands, you should be guided by these rules:

• first of all, you should choose perennials;
• they must be short, compact;
• unpretentious and not capricious;
• moderately growing;
• if you are interested in the beauty of the structure in the winter, conifers should be planted;
• plant plants that bloom at different times, this will allow the rock garden to look beautiful continuously;
• choose cultures that will coexist peacefully with each other.

Video: plants that are optimal for an alpine slide.

Step-by-step instructions for creating a rock garden

There are different schemes for the device of a rock garden with your own hands. It is difficult to say which of them is better, because they are all interesting and attractive in their own way.Consider one of the instructions for creating an alpine slide using the example of the most classic and popular scheme.

Before you study the step-by-step instructions in detail, pay attention to the stages of creating an alpine slide with your own hands:

1. Planning (sketching, drawing up a diagram).
2. Selection of stone materials and flowers, plants.
3. Site selection.
4. Layout of the future structure.
5. Drainage creation.
6. Laying stones.
7. Planting plants.

Step-by-step instructions for creating an alpine slide will help any summer resident and gardener to make a wonderful composition on their site. Now you can move on to a more detailed description.

Marking the future structure

Ideally, you need to make a sketch of the future composition. It will help you understand how well the place is chosen, and how organically the slide will fit into the site. With the help of a sketch diagram, you need to determine how much space the structure will take, what its height will be, and also roughly calculate how much material is needed - stones, substrate, sand.

Once you have defined the shapes and boundaries of the composition, you can do the markup. The best way to do this is to use a thick rope or mark it out using lines of some material (eg sand, crushed chalk).

Site preparation

If the soil is sandy at the place you have chosen, then the drainage base can be omitted, but in other cases, drainage is indispensable.

The creation of a drainage base includes the following steps:

• It is necessary to make a deepening in the chosen place of at least thirty centimeters (optimally 50 cm) and fill the pit with drainage material (the optimal drainage thickness is 10 centimeters, and if the soil is very dense, then the layer can be made thicker). Crushed stone, broken brick, stones of moderate parameters, gravel are ideal.
• On top of this layer, it is recommended to pour sand about 5 centimeters thick.
• After that, the material must be slightly compacted and covered with dug soil to the level of the rest of the earth. But before placing the soil, it is imperative to clear it of weeds.
• Then it is imperative to water this place abundantly so that the earth settles down.

The drainage layer will protect the area from moisture stagnation and ensure normal air permeability in the soil. Thanks to this, plants will be able to develop and grow normally, delighting with their beauty.

Setting stones

Now you can proceed to installing stones. The ideal shape for an alpine slide is pyramidal. Stones are laid in tiers (as a rule, from three to six tiers). That is, you need to lay stones in tiers like a pyramid to simulate a slope.

The following sequence of work should be followed when placing stones:

1) The largest stones are placed first. It will be better if you bury them a little in the ground (for maximum reliability and naturalness).

2) Then the space between the installed boulders is filled with soil. As a soil, you can use a mixture of garden soil, peat, sand (mix in the same ratio).

Important! The stones should not be stacked too tightly, otherwise there will be no room for plants and the normal development of their root system. There should be a free space between the stones, filled with earth.

3) After that, you need to fold the second row of stones, which is smaller in size than the first row, and also fill the empty space with soil. Please note that to make the slope of the rock garden, it is necessary that each subsequent row becomes smaller than the previous one.

4) After you have installed the required number of rows (and the required number is determined by your desires), you should complete the top of the composition - you can set one large or several not very large stones on the top.

Consider the classic schemes for creating an alpine slide and the location of stones:

 

Note! It is recommended to water the structure with water after laying each level. It must also be done after planting the vegetation.

Video: instructions on how to make an alpine slide with your own hands.

Planting

There are several excellent options for planting plants, for sure everyone can find the ideal option for their summer cottage or garden. To make a real alpine slope with your own hands, you should choose suitable plants.

Below you can explore several popular schemes for planting plants on an alpine slide and choose the best option for yourself:

How to care for a rock garden

The rock garden will delight you with its beauty and elegance only with proper and timely care. Otherwise, an exotic corner will turn into a bulky structure with overgrown weeds and withered plants. Doing the following will help you avoid this:

• Proper watering... After planting, you need to water it generously for the first 7-10 days. In the future, it is necessary to water in a timely manner as needed, depending on the characteristics of the planted crops. This must be done carefully so that the water pressure does not expose the root system.
• Weeding weeds... The presence of weeds can disrupt the entire aesthetics of the composition, "steal" the necessary substances in the soil from the planted plants and suppress their growth. Therefore, you need to regularly remove weeds.
• Mulching... As a mulching material, you can use tree bark, peat, sawdust. Mulch maintains optimal moisture in the soil and helps prevent overgrowth of weeds.
• Stone care... Over time, the destruction of stones is possible, because they crack, crumble. It is not recommended to allow the complete destruction of the material on the structure, because this can provoke damage to the roots, subsidence of the soil. Simply replace the damaged stones with new, whole material.
• Top dressing and fertilization... In order for the plants to grow normally and delight in lush color, it is sometimes necessary to feed them. But do not overuse feeding.

Video: how to weed in a rock garden.

Recommendations to help you create the perfect rock garden

In addition to the basic instructions and features of the choice of stones and vegetation, there are other features of creating a rock garden. When designing your composition, pay attention to the following guidelines:

• It is not enough to simply arrange an alpine slide in a country house or a plot of a private house; it must be regularly looked after so that it does not lose its beautiful and tidy appearance. Read about how to properly care for a rock garden below.
• You should not strive for symmetrical, ideal forms, the stone structure will look more lively and interesting with natural unevenness and asymmetry.
• A very good solution for arranging an alpine slide with your own hands - to make a small recreation area next to it. You can place a table, several chairs on it and enjoy your vacation with your family or friends, sipping delicious tea.
• Don't overdo it with stones. If there are too many of them, the whole emphasis will be on stones, which will violate the whole concept. Flowers and stones should look natural and harmonious together, so be careful.
• If you want to make a large structure, then you can take large stones, but if you want to make a small and compact slide, then it is appropriate to use a small material.
• An alpine slide with an artificial waterfall, stream, lake looks great. If you have the opportunity, you can create an artificial reservoir.

The photos show a great example of an alpine slide with a pond:

Photo gallery for ideas and inspiration

Visual images can help us decide what we want to see in our summer cottage. Therefore, before making a composition with your own hands, it is recommended to study photographs of different rock gardens, they will help form the final idea and become a source of inspiration.

A dacha or a vegetable garden that gives not only tasty fruits and vegetables, but also aesthetic pleasure and relaxation, are priceless.And the rock garden perfectly performs decorative functions, thanks to the skillfully connected stones and flowers, imitating a real mountain slope. Admiring such a piece of paradise will undoubtedly inspire and cheer you up.

And others look great too stone beds, how they can be done, read in this material.