We have been staying in rented houses and now recently we bought a house and moved in. The house came with a small garden. Unfortunately because of the trees shading the ground the grass wasn't growing.

The trees were good mostly herbs and fruit bearing trees.

Our room was above, and it wasn't something we wanted to look on. We wanted something that would be serene instead of just 'BLAH' So we decided to go for a Japanese Rock Garden look for where the grass wasn't growing.

Step 1: Grass and Rocks

To make a Rock Garden you need rocks!

Rocks comes in various colors. So choose something that will contrast well if you plan on having a pattern.

We also went for Australian Grass be cause it looks very nice and carpet like.

My mom donated a small bridge that she didn't want. It was perfect for our garden. :-)

Step 2: Sweat It Out :-)

First we got rid of all the remain grass and odd pots. Then we looked around to see what plants were around. The Kohomba Tree had a nice creeper plant going over. How ever the yellow croton was all over the place. So we removed it and placed it around the creeper plant.

We started organizing the plants. We removed the bushes that were all over and put them in one side in to a curved pattern. Then Once all the grass were removed. We added fertilizers and planted squares of ' Australian Grass' in the area where the sun and rain comes always.

Then we took a bag of white rocks and simply opened and pulled it into a curve shape spilling rocks on the way.

For the rest of the place we filled with earthy colored rocks. We didn't want a bit of sand showing so we filled with rocks in between the plants, roots and stems. There was a drain. As we didn't want the rocks to wash off we glued a plastic mesh and then placed the stones on top. Finally we placed the bridge where we felt it looked nice.

As the grass had to grow we needed to water it a lot and we told the kids to keep off the grass for a month. finding weeds in a rock garden is pretty easy as they stand out :-).

All in all we were very happy how our little garden turned from 'Blah' to something 'Ahh' :-)

I think it would look even great when the bushes start to flower. Can't wait till that happens. We still need to add more color, but I feel it's a great improvement :-) don't you think so?

What do you say? Isn't a Rock Garden a great solution to gardens where grass doesn't grow?