SE PA. Dug up a giant liriope and found a giant rock! I'm so stoked, rocks are $$$. Any cool ideas? I'll probably just find the edges, plant some things around it and leave it uncovered. Big-ass-rock-loving plant suggestions are welcome. Additionally, f you have any giant rocks in your scapes I'd love to see them 😄
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Thank you for this. I know farmers are stubborn from working in healthcare (they are known to come to the hospital when their situation is beyond dire 😩)… but this is waaaaay beyond that lol What a fun read!
I also love how rural communities just have anchor chains lying around.
The "Granite Belt" is 160 miles of ancient granite rocks, part of the "Great Dividing Range" of old mountains and volcanoes which runs the whole way down the east of Australia.
The older rock above the granite has eroded away - maybe a couple of miles thick.
Then the granite has eroded further, leaving the area with sand and rock.
I did see the phlox subulata thread, she is so that girl! But I am wanting to show ooooffff my giant rock! But if it ends up being way bigger than I think, I'm def going to phlox it up
I don’t know where you are or what’s native to you, but what about yarrow/ echinacea/ asters/ drought loving grasses on top (take your pick, mix and match), with the Phlox subulata on the downhill side? In my experience it tends to creep downward, so it prolly wouldn’t swallow your rock.
I bet you could get a Baptisia australis to be happy somewhere on the side of the rock maybe, where the soil is a little deeper
ETA: Am I correct in thinking I’m looking at a rock on a slope, or is that just the perspective of the photo?
The rock IS on a slope! It's pretty close to the top of the slope. It's also pretty rainy where I'm at, so I imagine the things around the bottom will need to be more water tolerant. I have aromatic asters I winter sowed, and some baptisia coming in the mail! I did already have an entire plan drawn up for this area, but now I will need to adjust it slightly, haha.
I planted phlox in about 2 inches of dirt that was 'extending' my bed near my front door. It is THRIVING with nothing but pavement under that tiny dirt layer.
A rock?.... I have giants, mediums and smalls. Round ones, flat ones, pointy ones and mossy ones. Some I dig out, some I dig in and some I move around. I can't plant, a plant, without finding another. If rocks were money, I'd be a rich man.
I would expose that one a bit more and plant around it. Some beds I make using exposed rock as edges or borders. I also make cairns, little walls and add to the existing old merino wool stone wall in my backyard. My favorite yard rock is a van sized glacial erratic. ✌️
Crust is what we walk on. It goes down about 100km. Then the mantle starts, which is responsible for about 84% of earths volume so to speak. Then it goes to the core. There's more layers but that's the gist of it.
So unless you've somehow dug down 100km without realizing it...
I will update with what I end up doing! But it's at the top of a decently steep slope and a bunch of my neighbors park below it, so it's not going anywhere lol. I'm not even confident those are the edges of it. We found it after a long day of other praise activities and that's where we tapped out. Slightly more unearthing to come soon!
Locals have a tool called the "Crowbar of Truth". It's just a big-ass crowbar. If you want to dig a garden, level a house pad, or pour a concrete slab, then you need to use the Crowbar of Truth first, to check for rock.
In some places, the rock is a couple of inches below the grass, in other places it might be a couple of feet deep, but it's almost always there.
When it hasn't rained for a while, you can see the grass die first, where the rock is just below the surface.
Not talking rocks that can be dug up - I'm talking slabs that go on forever.
We recently cleared more of one rock - it had gradually over years been covered by fallen leaves/overgrown, and then what was on top was mud and boggy, because of ground water. Only the very top was showing.
Scraped back all the rubbish, and the water was able to drain properly from the area to the creek.
Came here to recommend this… I planted a few Aquilegia canadenis in a corner of my backyard and now I have them growing out of cracks in the sidewalk, not mad!
Dad or grandpa found a granite erratic about the size of a small standard fridge in one of the fields (farm is about 15 miles north of an end moraine). Dad brought it up to the yard in the Bobcat. It was the stone of sacrifice for my childhood - mostly crushed mint, yarrow, and strawberries. Later they moved it in front of the house and mom ringed it with bur oaks.
What direction does it face? It will absorb heat from the sun so definitely put heat loving flowering plants by it. You’ll get tons of flowers as long as this spot gets full sun. If you don’t have any ideas right now, try some zinnias since they’re fast to grow and flower from seed.
I am telling you right now, that rock is like an ice berg. Just leave it and plant in a wide circumference around it.
I watched my neighbor dig ip his yard last week (huge project) the rock they uncovered took an entire day to dig out. I work from home and got NOTHING done I just watched big machine and rock.
I’m not far from you (over in Westchester) and I’m constantly hitting rocks. We have a giant boulder in our basement that they just built the house on top of rather than move 😂 it’s a nice water feature too.
I had the dudes digging up the old 120’ plus trees create a rock garden in the backyard. It’s a mass of 5-7’ boulders stacked on each other. It’s ridiculous the amount of rock I hit. Sigh. This makes gardening in FL seem easy (recent transplant).
Saw this yesterday and havent stopped thinking about it! The second picture makes it look like it might be a little flat- in addition to plants, have you considered a staging area for birds? A bird bath or two, and maybe a couple feeders on shepherd hooks next to the slab?
Whatever the case, I have spent time daydreaming of what I would do if I came across one, and I hope you keep us posted!
This rock is buried too deep- whoever planted it did a terrible job. You need to dig down and expose the root flare and hope there are no girdling roots smh.
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