2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
In recent years, it has become a popular trend to create stone gardens, alpine slides and other compositions using boulders of different sizes on your site. Where to get this amount of source material?
To decorate a garden, stones are not difficult to make with your own hands. Even a woman can do this process. It is necessary to master the technology, select the necessary initial components. First, try your hand at small sizes, then go to large ones.
Advantages
Artificial stones, in contrast to natural ones, have a number of advantages:
1. Low weight
2. Creation of any size and original shape.
3. Protection from natural factors using special means.
4. Shipping and purchasing costs are excluded.
5. Reducing the cost of the final product.
6. Use of scrap materials.
7. Selection of the required tone due to dyes.
The low weight of the structure, due to the use of lightweight fillers (cardboard, paper), ensures the mobility of the stone. It can, if desired, be moved from one place to another without any hassle. Changing the composition of the flower garden over time.
Drawings are applied to the base, they create roughness, give any shape and size to the finished product. To protect it from rain, wind, frost, the surface is covered with a special mastic for sealing concrete. It is sold in hardware stores.
Boulders are made within the site, so transport costs for heavy equipment are excluded. Raw materials are used in small quantities. Your own car is suitable for transportation. Their price is several orders of magnitude lower than that of natural stone. Therefore, an artificial analogue is much cheaper.
Color is given to the finished product by introducing a dye into the composition of the concrete mixture or by painting with special solutions after the base has dried. In stores, it is easy to find the tone for the desired composition.
Materials (edit)
To create an artificial stone, any available materials are suitable:
• construction waste (brick breakage, pieces of concrete, thin wire, glass);
• old cardboard boxes, newspapers, rags, polystyrene, sawdust (inner filler);
• river sand;
• clay;
• cement;
• water;
• pigments to give the desired shade.
Methods of creation
There are several options for creating artificial stones:
1. Layered structure. Imitates natural rocks. The material is gradually folded in layers, like a pie with layers of different textures.
2. Lightweight monolith (a cardboard base fixed with a wire is coated with a cement mixture).
3. Pouring into silicone or rubber molds.
4. Use of polyurethane foam, followed by painting in a natural color.
For each method, its own technology is being developed. In the next article, we will analyze them in more detail.
Usage
From faraway Japan to us came the passion for rocky gardens. The small size of the country with a large population forces its inhabitants to create interesting compositions of stunted plants and boulders in a limited space. Here gray-white color of stone and rich bright colors of flowers are organically combined. It is good to rest in such a place after working days. Get a charge of cheerfulness and optimism.
Alpine slides have migrated from Western Europe to our gardens. These are small hills (hills), fortified with stones of various textures and sizes. The space between them in the lower part is occupied by undersized plants. Flowers of medium height are located at the top (hosts, astilbe, ferns). Rejuvenated, stonecrop, mosses, miniature hosts, levisia, lumbago, dryads, arabis, periwinkle are suitable as ground cover crops.
It is not difficult to create beauty on your site using artificial stones. The main thing is to have a great desire, be patient, and prepare a plan for the future composition.
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