Selecting stones for the Japanese Garden
One of my first challenges was to find a source of rocks and stones to use in the garden. After a lot of effort, I only managed to find one source in the UK (I found another later) for the sort of material I was looking for and that was Border Stone in Welshpool, Powys, Wales. As the purchase of the stones was one of the largest outgoings in the project, my wife and I drove over to Welshpool one Friday and stayed overnight in a hotel right in the centre of the town. We spent around three hours exploring the quarry and selecting the type of stones we required for the garden. In fact, I had to personally select and move what turned out to be 2.3 tonnes of large green granite blocks!
Here is my initial attempt at deciding how much of each stone type I would need to order. As it turned out, I was not that far wrong although I didn't really follow my layout plan very closely for some very practical reasons!
The following stones were eventually ordered after a lot of careful consideration and guessimations - natural stones are NOT cheap, especially when they are imported!
 | Hand-selected large Cambrian green granite - 2.3 tonnes |
 | 200 - 300mm Cambrian green rockery granite - 1 tonne |
 | 16mm Cambrian green chippings - packs |
 | Rockery moorland black slate - 0.5 tonne |
 | 18-24mm imported black stones - 36 packs |
 | 35-50mm imported black stones - 28 packs |
 | 50-150mm green paddle stones - 6 packs |
 | 50-150mm black paddle stones - 9 packs |
 | Purple slate scree - 3-4" - 13 packs |
 | Purple slate scree, small - 17 packs |
 | 250-350mm large multi-mix cobbles - 30 and 125-200mm small multi-mix cobbles - 50 |
 | Multi-size reclaimed 'sets' (for walls) |
The stone monoliths!
Getting the delivered was another matter however! With nearly 6 tonnes of palleted stones how do you get them off the lorry? We solved the problem by hiring a fork-lift truck from a local hire centre at great expense - it needed to be of robust design as each pallet weighed in at 1 tonne.
The garden stones just after delivery. There seemed to be an awful lot of stone!