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When I was a kid, I lived out in a rural area and we only had clay soil once you dug about 6 or 12 inches down. When youre planning your garden, you have got to put sun and soil quality at the top of the list of things to consider. Without the right amounts of both sun and water, your garden wont grow. With the right combination of water, soil and sunlight, you can raise just about anything.

To solve my clay dirt problems, I turned to rock gardening, which focuses on adding lots of rocks to your landscape and focusing on plants that only need a few inches of good dirt.

If youve got a similar situation, you can grow your own rock garden. Some herbs truly love the rocky craggy sod that you can find in areas like this all over the world. With good drainage, adequate sun and all the nooks and crannies around the rocks where roots can dig in, rock gardens may be just the thing for you to try your hand at.

When planning your herb garden, be sure that you are choosing herbs that will stay compact, because with limited room you do not want anything taking over. Another tip is to look for herb plants with silver or gray leaves. This is a big tip-off that these plants will do well in that type of environment.

• Hen-and-Chicks: {I cant imagine cutting open a hen or chick and rubbing it on a wart, but this perennial succulent herb, which is also known as St. Patricks cabbage, has a long history of healing them.} The leaves of this plant store water for periods of drought. Your hen can get up to 4 inches across pretty fast. Soon little off-shoots, or chicks, can sprout up from the edges of your hen. In the summer, a 9 inch spike arises from the center of each mature hen to display pinkish-red blooms. Before you know it, you will have a colony of herbs.

• Wild Oregano: This perennial from the Mediterranean region can grow energetically up to 30 inches tall with its oval leaves and purple flowers that come out late in the summer. Although you certainly may eat this variety of oregano, it will not quite be the same as the Greek oregano you are familiar with from Italian dinners.

• Marjoram: It is wonderful when you can sculpt a lovely rock garden using culinary herb plants like Marjoram. Its a perennial that has a delicate scent with oval gray-green leaves and tiny white flowers. For marjoram to retain its shape and form, keep it pinched back (use the clippings in your Italian dinners) so that it will keep growing wellfull sun and the good drainage in your rock garden can help too.

• Thyme: The shiny, little leaves of the thyme plant are clustered along woody stems that are adorned with many white or pink flowers and grows to a height of up to a foot. Thyme grows best when the soil is sandy, well-drained and gets a whole lot of sunlight. Thyme has a tendency to grow wild, so keep it pinched back to maintain its compact shape.

Part of the wonder of rock gardens is the contrast of the hard rocks and the soft plants. The difference in colors also helps in achieving a sense of the beautiful. You can even use aromatic and culinary herb plants in your rock garden, which will give you all the benefits of a regular herb garden.

Good luck with your herb gardening. Be sure to let me know how your herb garden grows.

Here is more information on Herb Garden Designs. Here is a website with a free mini-course dedicated to Herb Gardens.

Hollies will grow in full sun or partial shade, but will become spindly in dense shade. In windswept areas hollies should be planted in sheltered locations. Consider location carefully also from the standpoint of space. They grow slowly, and although they are small at first, they eventually become broad specimens. Since they will remain in the same location for many years they will benefit by thorough soil preparation. Heavy clay soil can be improved by the addition of sand and two to three bushels of leaf mold or peat moss, for plants three to four feet tall. Small hollies will not need that much humus immediately; more can be worked into the soil as the plants grow.

Potted or canned hollies may be planted at any time during the growing season. Balled and b u rl a pp ed plants transplant best in March and April, just before the new growth commences, and again in late summer and fall. Careful handling in the planting operation is imperative. A broken root ball may ruin the plant. At the time of planting, a depression should be left around each plant. This should be filled with water after planting, and repeated whenever the soil becomes dry during the first year.

Mulch each plant with oak leaves, peat moss mixed with old manure, wood chips or sawdust – to conserve moisture and protect the roots against rapid changes of temperature. A commercial fertilizer high in nitrogen should be spread around the hollies before wood chips or sawdust are applied. This counteracts the depletion of nitrogen from the soil in the initial breakdown of the chips and sawdust. Hollies will benefit from a feeding each February or March, if commercial fertilizers are used – or later when growth is active, if the liquid plant foods are used. A gardener is fortunate if he can apply an annual dressing of old manure which may be supplemented with cotton seed meal.

Hollies need to be shaped in their early years. Long, awkward shoots should be pruned; this work is best done in March before growth commences. Nipping back the tips of many of the branches will induce them to send out side branches to fill in the main body of the plant. If a plant is thin near the top and an ungainly leader has forged ahead, the appearance of the plant can be helped by tying one or two side branches in an upright position to fill in around the leader. And to clean the ground, it is helpful to use gas powered leaf blowers to lessen the work on cleaning the leaves.

When hollies grow older they usually begin suckering at the base. If some of these suckers are left to grow, a bushier plant will result.

For your information there is much more on the topic of gas powered leaf blowers. Drop by today at http://www.plant-care.com/gas-powered-leaf-blowers.html. Get a totally unique version of this article from our article submission service

A yard full of delphiniums! How does that prospect strike you? I tried such a scheme 10 years on in my city lot, with only a 43-foot frontage, grew so many I literally sent a truckload of them to a trade show for decoration and still had so many left that it was almost impossible to tell any had been cut.

At first I thought my “yard full of delphiniums” idea was going to be a flop. The seedlings came along well enough and plants looked promising. But, by the first of June that year no more than a dozen had flowered. Then I went away for a week.

When I came back, I was flabbergasted. The yard had been transformed. I sat in the car and feasted my eyes on the most gorgeous sight I had even seen row upon row of magnificent bloom. Stalks were 4 to 6 feet high, some as tall as 7 feet, with 36 to 54 inches of bloom. There were blues, purples, mauves, lavenders, whites and bi-colors of every description.

I got out of my car and inspected them in detail. They were so brilliant that people passing by stopped and asked to come in to see them. Next to getting good stock, the important thing is care of it. My garden was thoroughly prepared for the seedlings as they came along. It was spaded and both compost and well rotted cow manure were put in.

Here is where you go to town on fertilizers It doesn’t matter what your soil is – loam, clay or sand – throw away the books and put in all the compost and manure your pocketbook will stand.

Mine was heavy clay soil. I trenched the bed two spades deep, put compost and manure in the trench and covered it with the next spade row of soil. Then, I raked it level and planted the delphiniums 18 inches apart in rows 2 feet apart.

Planting

To set the begonia plants and delphinium plants out, I opened up a hole by taking out a shovelful of topsoil. I next put in a 2-1/4-inch potful of some complete fertilizer such as Vigoro plus another 2-1/4-inch potful of bone meal and mixed this with the soil. Then I put the soil back and opened up a smaller hole for the seedling. Being careful not to break the root ball, I inserted the seedling in the hole and firmed the earth around it with my fingers. Each growing tip or crown was at soil level. Each newly set row of begonia plants and delphinium plants was thoroughly watered.

From then on, it was just ordinary garden culture. I watered when necessary and always in the morning so that foliage would be dry at night. This discourages mildew. I kept weeds hoed out by shallow cultivation. Since I had been careful in properly preparing the soil and planting, little additional care was necessary from then on.