It has been 18 years since I first put together this rock garden in front of my house. Over the years, I added tons of rock to it and it soon became more of a rock pile than a rock garden. Overgrown with weeds and vines, I decided to sell a bunch of the rocks during the roundup this year.

I cleared away the weeds and vines and mowed the grass and waited for the people to come and buy the rocks.

The people came, and despite hauling away over 3,500 pounds of rocks and minerals from the various piles around the house. The garden was still filled with rocks, only now, they were moved and piled and the garden looked more like a roadside ditch with with gravel. I decided to rebuild the rock garden with the material that was left.

I decided to remove the old rotten backboards that had been up for years.

Next, I removed all the rocks to get down to the base gravel, which consisted of small chips of agate from Texas.

Then I built a new frame to hold the gravel, sprayed the ground with roundup and covered it with ground cloth.

Next, I added over a ton of white gravel.

Now it was time to repopulate the garden. I decided to use stuff that I really liked rather than just piling up rocks to take up space. The first section I worked on was a display of the pink and purple banded marble I had collected at the Nantahala Talc Company years ago.

Then I started on a petrified wood display.

I added a few oddball pieces I collected at Chunky Gal Mountain and a few other places. This is a fossil Loch Ness Monster foot I found on top of the mountain!

Petrified wood from Texas, North Carolina and the Biloxi River in Mississippi.

Nantahala Marble.

On right, kyanite from Ridgecrest, Black Mountain, Maggie Valley and the Sinkhole Mine. And a few various other pieces from Little Pine Mine and Clay County, NC.

Rock Garden #1 is finished, now on to #2.