Stone in the Winter Garden

This time of year the bones of my become very exposed. The deciduous leaves of most of my plants have fallen and blown away on the wind to reveal the stone and structures that lay underneath. It's a good time to evaluate how the stone in the garden fits.

Here is one of my dry creek beds that helps to funnel rainwater away from the foundation. I would like to a rain barrel eventually from this gutter. On the right of the dry creek bed are a couple red twig dogwoods and a catmint. The red twig dogwoods enjoy the rain water while the catmint is supposed to send a minty smell into the air around the gutter when it rains. I'm not sure if this works as I generally don't stand out there during the rain.

Here is one of the rock borders I added this past summer. I like using natural rock and stone as borders to help define the garden beds. It all has to be imported from other locations since I think I have the only yard in Tennessee without rock! That's both good and bad.  Good for my back when digging holes for plants - bad for my borders.

I like this picture with the suns rays highlighting my natural stepping stone pathway. The stepping stones help me get around when the grass is wet or frosted over. Walking on frosted grass isn't good for the grass.

This is a stone garden bench I made from a large (and quite heavy) stone set on top of two other smaller stones. It's very stable and shimmed up from underneath with thin small stones to be level. I arranged it so that it fit in with the stone garden bed borders

This other large stone is about 4 feet long and serves as another low natural stone bench at the end of my birdbath garden.

And who could forget my hippo rock! Or at least that's what some people called it this summer. I think it looks like a praying penguin what do you think?