Waste water drains to "rock garden." Plant it, or leave it?

[singerteacher]

Hello wonderful TFPers!

There's a "rock garden" in the corner of our yard where the pool waste accumulates when we backwash or drain water after a big rain. It's a nightmare to weed and keep tidy looking, so we recently decided to remove all the rock and plant the area with water-loving plants. But when we started to remove the rocks, we discovered that the rock layer is somewhat deep. Suddenly it occurred to us (perhaps brought on by our aching backs?) that maybe the rocks are there for a reason and we should leave them! :?

The question: Is this perhaps a drain field installed by the builders on purpose to absorb the pool waste water? Would we experience flooding of our yard if we planted it instead?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts ...

 

[AnnaK]

We had a similar corner at our previous house, lots of rocks for no reason we could figure out - until that first year the rains came. All the water collects there and creates a temporary pond. We had a major weed problem as well.

We resolved it by spreading about 4" of gravel and covered that with landscape rock. We put decorative fencing around it all and set some planters on the rocks during summer. In the Fall we blew the leaves off and that's about it as far as maintenance of the "evil triangle".

 

[singerteacher]

So, I'm guessing that if water accumulates there when it rains, it kills the grass. Which is why the last homeowners made it a rock garden.

Did you put the gravel and landscape rock on top of the rocks? And that is what stopped the weeds?

Thanks for your reply, by the way!

 

[AnnaK]

Yes, we added the gravel on top of the existing rocks which, for the most part, were partially buried in the clay. We initially sprayed the area with Ground-Clear. The gravel we used is that small grey stuff that goes in under brick paths, do you know which I mean? I'm sure there's a name for it. We compacted it as best we could. Then the white rocks went over that in a layer of maybe three rocks deep.

The only weeds we ever got afterward were those that grew from seed in what dust and dirt had blown into the triangle, easy to pick out by hand. The Ground-Clear killed all vegetation initially and the gravel prevented it from coming back. It acts like landscape fabric but is better for drainage in an area that almost always wet.

We occasionally had problems with some of the white rocks turning green from algae but guess what? Bleach! I'd make a dilute bleach solution, 1 c to a gallon, and spray it over the rocks which cleaned them right up. That was long before we had a pool but it's one of the many reasons why I'm now a fan of BBB.