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Limestone Quarry Wall Planting
jinnyjones
Posts: 4
in Plants
Hello! We have a 100ft limestone quarry wall (South facing) in our garden. We have recently cleared the bottom half of ivy and brambles and are looking for some suggestions / help / ideas of the planting that might work and thrive in this environment. There is quite a lot of wall - maybe something that likes to spread?
Kind regards and thank you ever so much for your advice.....
Jinny
0
Posts
Are you looking to grow something up it or in it?
Hi Hogweed...
Ideally we would be looking to grow something in it / on it? There are lots of little ledges on the face....
How lovely for you. Dianthus of all kinds love lime and well drained situations. Silver saxifrages adore lime cliffs too. Aubrieta and campanula would soon get their roots into the cracks and crevices.the alpine forms of Achillea would be happy too. Look out for the forms of Erodium and the smaller Geranium sanguineum types.
Envy!
Last edited: 22 May 2017 20:53:12
Berghill, thank you so much - your plant suggestions will be the perfect place for us to start.
We are very lucky to have such a beautiful and unusual garden setting (and it's great for bird watching too). Once it is planted I will pop some photos up...
Thanks again!
You may have to drill some holes into the limestone to put the plants in. Hopefully your quarry face is not too hard to do that. Had another think and came up with Erinus alpinus, white, pink and red forms.
You would probably get more specialist advice on how to actually plant the face with plants from members of the Scottish Rock Garden Club. Their Website is really good.
Berghill, you are a star!
There are lots of natural ledges on the rock face, some are quite deep. There is also some good cracking and splitting within the rock which I'm hoping will allow the roots to establish.
I've had a quick glance at The Scottish Rock Garden Club website and it looks a great resource for information...
Please share photographs of your progress. Many of us on here would love to see how you get on.
Have fun doing it!
jinnyjones, you may be the only person on here who really needs to have a close look at the 'best in show' garden at Chelsea this year, which is a limestone quarry 'garden'. You may find some plant suggestions that could do well as your wall is south facing (albeit not in the southern Mediterranean - so some research into hardiness will be required)
“It's still magic even if you know how it's done.”
Raisingirl beat me to it with her comment!
On the limestone face things like sedums and Centranthus spring to mind, at the base, based on what I've seen growing up in Derbyshire where there are a lot of quarries and natural limestone scree slopes, Centaurea, Scabiosa and geraniums. A pseudo-natural, pseudo-Mediterranean planting would probably work really well.