Garden and River Rock

[Liquidcopper]

Hello Everyone!
I bought a new home last year with an acre of river rock, 3 feet deep, with a thin plastic plastic liner. My question is; can I successfully plant a garden on top of the rock after removing the first foot and replacing it with top soil?
Thank you for your time

 

[Mr_Yan]

Remove a vertical foot of rock? Replace that rock with a top soil and compost blend then plant that area?

What kind of garden are you thinking? Veg? Leafy perennial? Trees and shrubs?

Can you rent and drive something like a Bobcat skidstear or tractor?

That's a lot of rock to move and the edges will be a nightmare to keep from becoming overgorwn with weeds as the soil and river rock merge with each rain.

If you want a veg garden what if you build a raised 4x8 bed and put a layer of heavy weed cloth at the bottom and fill that with a compost blend. Put that right over the existing rock.

 

[Liquidcopper]

These are great ideas, thank you!
I want to plant shrubs, trees and bulbs in the area. I transplanted a few trees I brought from my previous home that are doing well. I dug till I broke through the plastic lining, the lining was brittle so I think any trees will be able to root through it

 

[Oliver Buckle]

Hi, Welcome to the forum. I am from the UK and 'river rock' is not a term I am familiar with, that may just be me though. Is it rounded pebbles or quarried rock? And what sort of size is it?
From your descriptions of what you want, I would try making individual planting places and leaving the rest as a base to walk on somehow, but the details would depend on the aggregate.

 

[Mr_Yan]

Yeah, @Oliver Buckle has a point. What is your "river rock". To me river rock is smooth rocks about 50 to 80 mm in diameter. I have it in a few places around my house where the previous owner did the same plastic with rock over it thing. But they "only" went about 6" deep.

Are your rocks really 3 FEET deep? You'll be waist deep in that hole when you get to the plastic.

 

[DrCase]

Do you have any yard pictures ?

 

[Oliver Buckle]

By my reckoning taking a foot off an acre would give you over forty three and a half thousand cubic feet of rock to lose, English and American acres may not be the same, but it is going to be a heck of a lot. Worth finding out if someone would buy it, a friend of mine sold a lot of granite left in piles on her property as infill to someone rebuilding a harbour wall, otherwise it could be expensive to lose, just in transport. That's why I would think about just making holes for plants.

 

[Liquidcopper]

Hi, Welcome to the forum. I am from the UK and 'river rock' is not a term I am familiar with, that may just be me though. Is it rounded pebbles or quarried rock? And what sort of size is it?
From your descriptions of what you want, I would try making individual planting places and leaving the rest as a base to walk on somehow, but the details would depend on the aggregate.

Hello
They’re rounded, smooth rocks, ranging from 1 inch to 4 inches wide

 

[Liquidcopper]

Yeah, @Oliver Buckle has a point. What is your "river rock". To me river rock is smooth rocks about 50 to 80 mm in diameter. I have it in a few places around my house where the previous owner did the same plastic with rock over it thing. But they "only" went about 6" deep.

Are your rocks really 3 FEET deep? You'll be waist deep in that hole when you get to the plastic.

Yes, they’re three feet deep, it’s crazy.
I had over 100 people come by to take as much as they wanted over the past few months, it’s barely made a dent.

 

[Liquidcopper]

Do you have any yard pictures ?

Here’s the picture I gave people to come collect free right rocks

 

[DrCase]

What is the history of the property ?

old ponds that got filled

 

[Oliver Buckle]

That looks like a lovely location. Those sort of pebbles would be hard to make holes with supporting edges in, on the other hand if you made filled holes for your big plants you might be able to wash enough dirt down between them to make a walking surface of pebbles and grass. If you really want rid of them I would try contacting people like local highways or railroads who might use them for infill on embankments or such. I think I said earlier about my friend who bought an old quarry, she sold the heaps of stone left about the place to infill a harbour wall, and made a fair bit of money from it.