Tips on creating a rock / alpine garden please

[Watellz]

We recently moved into a house with a back garden with a large raised bed approx 10ftx10ft. Digging into it we've found there is about 4ins of soil and then it's rubble, bricks, cement etc.

We're not serious gardeners so don't feel the need to dig out all the rubble etc. Instead we'd like to work with what we've got and thought of creating a rock garden. This would create a little height, as we can't grow trees / strubs in 4ins of soil, and we could use alpines which we believe don't require much depth of soil and spread.

Is this a good plan? Any advice would be much welcomed.

Sounds like a plan. If you are going to bring in more rockery stones, try to bury them partially, and try to make it look as though they are a natural part of the landscape, coming out of the ground like natural rock strata.

The looks to avoid are the 'tray of rock buns' or 'hurled from a great height'.😁

You can then plant stuff round them.

BeNiceWhenItsFinished thats really good advice and something I'd not considered

I created a little rockery in lockdown (now mainly taken over by pretty thugs) and ordered the 'easy collection' from this company which was reasonably priced and came well packaged: icealpines.co.uk

https://www.icealpines.co.uk/

I have an area that for different reasons won't grow much. Part of my solution is a small pond I'm about to create in a half barrel. It strikes me that one might look pretty in the middle of your rock garden.

be aware that many rockery/alpine plants are fussy buggers that actually require very particular conditions to thrive, so don't get too carried away with the catalogs and do research how easy the plants will be to maintain.

Have you considered herbs? They also thrive in very little soil and are basically indestructible (and tasty)

Nice idea, but it might get too hot in a raised rockery.