When your back yard is a long south-facing sandy downhill slope, not much will grow, except weeds.    For a productive garden Irrigation is needed and hard landscaping is used to create flat spaces that allow moisture retention.  Many retaining walls and rock slopes were used to create garden beds, borders, and rockeries.    Hundreds of large boulders were hauled in by hand and used for the rockeries and rock slopes.    Spaces behind or between the boulders had better soil inserted.    Irrigation of such an extensive area is best handled by rotating heads.     On the south-facing, sunniest slopes succulents worked best.

There are a number of different types of succulents, but most of the ones used are in the sedum family.

Each sedum has a different flowering time and each is best suited to a type of space.

There are a few rock borders, retaining wall borders, and pocket beds that are really just a variation of a rockery.    A few are featured here.    Click an image for a lightbox view.

rockery