Rockin' in the Garden

A lot of native garden efforts incorporate rocks for a number of aesthetic and practical reasons such as drainage paths, areas to recharge water from downspouts, or a 'thematic' statement.
Unfortunately, in this author's opinion (occasionally a rant!), these are not always treated with good, naturally-based design forethought, which should include:

• A variety of rock sizes,used with a 'planned randomness". The best suggestion: find a local canyon or streambed and observe what Mother Nature did! Achieving this may even involve obtaining rock sold or separated by uniform size and mixing 3-4 sizes, with the suggested observations as your guide.
• A stream bed  in a yard without any other rocks tends to look imposed; consider at least a few other 'out croppings' of similar rock, partially buried to avoid "dinosaur eggs".
• There are lots of other garden organization benefits to these efforts including providing natural protection for offsets in elevation, accents for natural-looking paths, accenting certain plant forms in a natural way, plus the fact that rocks are a good water-retention mulch.

...rock on!