Arena - a sandy garden

If the alpine hills and rockeries on our sites are increasingly common, then unusual compositions of sand and plants, arenaria (from the Greek Arena - sand), a novelty. First, the literature on the arrangement and selection of plants for such an unusual garden is small. And secondly, the art of creating beauty from sand and stones is not so widely known.

The correct selection of the place is half the case

Since the landscape will resemble a desert, a place for it must be sunny. In addition, it must be well protected from the wind, so that the sand does not inflate all around the perimeter. For sites that are located on the slopes, the best place is in the lowland. The most difficult thing in choosing a place is to find suitable "neighbors". Agree that a piece of the desert next to a fountain or flowering bushes will not look very good. Best of all, the arena will look near the songs from snags, you can try the neighborhood with the Japanese garden of stones.

Arrangement of the arena presumes the absence of pets, since for a long time this beauty will not survive. Pussies will almost certainly use your composition instead of a tray, and for a dog it's a great place to bury something. Such problems are easily solved with the use of special drugs: you process them a site every few weeks and the animal just does not approach it.

What are the arenas created from?

Most of the composition is sand. The best is coarse, it can be combined with small gravel or pebbles. If you want to recreate sand dunes or dunes, it is better to use a crumb of sandstone or stone (red, yellow or white). Decorate the composition with marble, granite or coil.

As accents large stones are suitable. They are slightly different composition. But the color of the stones should be as accurately selected as the color of the sand. Excellent complement the general background of several dry snags and twigs with spikes.

Now consider those plants that can be used to decorate the arena. They should be very small, because it is a piece of desert on the site. A few bright little spots only "cheer" the composition. There are several options for selecting vegetation.

1. The first way to decorate the desert is to plant the cereals. The blue fescue, sedge, feather grass, millet will do. You can try wormwood, lavender or thyme. Get an Asian desert.
2. The African variant presupposes the planting of succulents and cacti. Perfectly suitable cleaning, stone roses. You can combine cacti with mountain sand, red elder, dwarf dye, cornflower or blue-head.
3. The most spectacularly look at the sandy background are large cacti, agaves or lithopses. Get a real Mexican landscape. It can be supplemented also with a thick-skinned, echevery. These plants are quite able to spend the winter in the ground and almost do not require care.

The technology of the desert device on the site

If you decide to create an arena instead of roses, you will have to stock up not only creative mood, but some knowledge. First of all, you should dig a foundation pit in the middle of the shovel and cover it with a film. We fix the edges of the film with stones and earth.

Further, according to the plan, we plant the plants. To do this, make a hole in the film and plant cacti or flowers, you can use the container method and prikopat plants directly in the pots. Then fill the area with sand or stone crumbs. We work manually. A layer of sand about 10 cm, near the planting it can be slightly reduced. Then everything is moistened, decorative ornaments are placed and the work is completed.