Installing a garden bed in gravel fill

I have a gravel driveway with about 2-3 ft of space alongside where I would like to plant perennials. This part of the property, the driveway and the space alongside, was dug out for a construction project next door and they filled the hole with gravel instead of putting the dirt back. The gravel goes down probably 10 ft. I don't want a raised bed because I want to have clearance to open a car door when parked in the driveway. I'm thinking of basically digging a trench into the gravel and filling it with dirt. Not sure how deep - 3 ft? 4 ft? I am also wondering if I need to line the trench with weed barrier fabric or something to keep the dirt from percolating away into the gravel. Or should I be more worried that water will not percolate through the gravel and my plants will have waterlogged roots? Maybe I need to find out the type of gravel and how compacted it is to answer that question. Any thoughts or advice on inserting a garden bed into a gravel bed would be appreciated. Thanks!

My builder did something similar - but I didn't know it right off. Around the front steps and along the house foundation - he put a wide swath of rock --I hesitate to call it gravel. The pieces were very large - like a driveway gravel. Maybe an inch and a half. Anyway, on top of the rock he spread about a foot of soil (red clay) and put a few foundation bushes in. When I tried to dig around the front walkway and around the foundation, the shovel hit that gravel...that was a rude awakening. No digging in that stuff - it was like an electric shock going up the arm. Anything I did in there was never satisfactory-- annuals did ok - but nothing else that needed to spread to any depth did well. So I think you are right to plan 3-4 feet depth of soil (I added about another 10 inches to the original ~foot.) After about 4 years of unsatisfactory results, and not a whole lot of fun digging, I ended up having it all dug up / and part of it buried depending on the landscaping need for our design. I don't think you will have problems with waterlogged plants - the gravel drains well. If anything, maybe it would drain too well. (I assume you have all gravel and not the finer 'crush and run' or similar taking up space underneath the actual gravel..because that might harden up and create the 'pot effect' that you are concerned about.) Not having a photo of your space to look at, I was wondering.. would it look good / give the planting space you need if instead of digging the gravel up, worrying about weeds and drainage, etc., could you instead use tall planting pots - for small trees or longer style troughs for other plants - where you could site the pots along the gravel strip... and yet space them far enough apart to allow access to your vehicles?

This message was edited Oct 1, 2007 11:16 PM

If I were in your situation, I'd try to find out what plants might actually like the coditions you have. I know very little about rock gardening but rock gardens are beautiful... maybe you could call or e-mail these folks for ideas. They're in your town, it might be worth a try:

http://www.horticulture.wisc.edu/allencentennialgardens/index.htm


http://www.horticulture.wisc.edu/allencentennialgardens/Rock_Garden.htm

Great idea !