I know this is kind of off topic for hypertufa, but HT would also work for most of the following..... >MMW --- Boy...we sure hope you have pix of the class in action. Shotcrete is a process I'm itching to give a try. Had a friend who built a lot of sets & movie props out of the lightweight mix. Sounds excellent...who put it on? The class was through the "Workforce Training" center at a local vocational-technical turned community college here in Albuquerque. The WTC trains folks to work in construction, beauty salons, auto shops, your basic vo-tech output. The site we worked at is owned by the county and they were paying Desi to bring up classes to enhance the site, an old tuberculosis sanitorium near Albuquerque, NM. The teacher, named is Desi Brown, has about 20 years experience in fake rock work and has spent most of his time working at the local zoo, botanic gardens and for the city making rock facades here and there. My plan over the next month or so is to collect some photos of all of his stuff to post in an album which will include some pics I have of the class. Desi is getting out of the rock making game and into teaching, hence his foray into teaching techniques of rock making. Desi was very generous in offering recipes, experience in making press pads and molds of various rock surfaces, and his time in explaining what works and what doesn't work. We made, textured, carved and stained faux rocks and vines in addition to shotcreting additional rocks and vines. We learned to bend and tie rebar armatures, wire in lath/chicken wire subarmatures. Shotcrete is a fairly involved (and expensive) process. You need a cement truck (you need several yards of cement to make shotcreting worthwhile), a compressor/pump, alot of shotcrete hose and several nozzles just to start. It's not something you can do by yourself or even with one or two other folks. We shotcreted 10 yards of cement creating half a dozen large (boulder sized) rocks, steps, walkways, vines. We also used the shotcrete to backfill behind some molds of rockfaces that we had created in an earlier class and mounted throughout the landscape. It was a great experience and I learned alot about working with cement that can be applied to HT. I'll have to see about succinctly putting a review together. Make some friends of contractors and see if they'll let you come along or observe a shotcrete session. It's way cool and a great way to get alot of cement distributed in a relatively short time. BTW, our shotcrete recipe was 10 yards of "10 bag" cement, which works out to 940 lbs of portland per yard or 9400 lbs total. Whew. Desi recommends using lime if you are working on vertical surfaces and to make the cement stickier. I have a list of his recipes somewhere. I'll dig them out for you later. If you want to see what shotcrete can do, go to your local zoo and look at the habitats for various critters, 'specially outdoors. I'd bet that they are mostly shotcreted. Tah for now. Jo

Thanks Tom. As it is, I am more central to central-north. The area I am in is one of the higher locations of this fairly flat state. According to historical data I have read, the area I am in is considered sandhills or pine sandhills. Both Slash and Longleaf grew here, but Longleaf has been far more extensively farmed to the point where one site, Floridata I think, stated that there are no longer ANY virgin stands of Longleaf. I am not trying to revert my yard back to pre-colonial times, but I do try to keep in mind what what naturally belongs here. The way I see it, God/Nature put those type of plants here for a reason, so the best I can do is try to incorporate them into my yard along with the exotics. And besides, it's hard for me to turn my nose up at the idea of free pine needle mulch! As far as my debate goes, I went out today and looked over my beds from various angles and it turns out that there was no debate. To try and incorporate three pines into the bed would have required a pretty massive transplanting effort of several plants that are finally to the point of being established. Something I was not really wanting to do. So now two grass-stage Longleafs are sitting in their new homes and starting their own establishment period.

We're about 1400 miles away. We began building in December and have made probably 5 trips out to the build site. Each time we go we spend two days meeting with different subs, making choices and always have a great relaxing dinner with our builder and his wife. We have been incredibly fortunate with our builder and plan to be in the house the last week of June. It's been so smooth it's kinda scary!

Thanks for all the input. Even though I revamped this bed a lot last year, pulling out the ones that didn't match my color scheme, I think it IS choppy / restless looking. But I couldn't think of how to articulate it. So now you have solidified my feeling that it was not right. The foreground in particular "just grew" as I added plants whever I fell in love with something new. Or got a good deal, which is not the way to build a coherent look. Part of the reason it is not edged is that the grass on the border keeps dying (too much shade for the grass), so the bed kept expanding. First off, I will remove all the Baby Bunting minis. I will try to stay away from small and variegated. I was thinking about pulling out the Queen Josephine too, even though larger and well established (green with yellow-cream edge). Then I will see how it looks and ponder a bit more. I will wait til the weather moderates, it's been too hot for hostas or me.