Stones for the Japanese Garden

One of my first challenges was to find a source of rocks and stones to use in the garden. After a lot of effort, I only managed to find one source in the UK (I found another later) for the sort of material I was looking for and that was Border Stone in Welshpool, Powys, Wales. As the purchase of the stones was one of the largest outgoings in the project, my wife and I drove over to Welshpool one Friday and stayed overnight in a hotel right in the centre of the town. We spent around three hours exploring the quarry and selecting the type of stones we required for the garden. In fact, I had to personally select and move what turned out to be 2.3 tonnes of large green granite blocks! Border Stone's address, telephone and web site are:

Here is my initial attempt at deciding how much of each stone type I would need to order. As it turned out, I was not that far wrong although I didn't really follow my layout plan very closely for some very practical reasons!

The following stones were eventually ordered after a lot of careful consideration and guessimations - natural stones are NOT cheap, especially when they are imported!

Dry	Stone Description	Wet
	Hand-selected large Cambrian green granite - 2.3 tonnes
	200 - 300mm Cambrian green rockery granite - 1 tonne
	16mm Cambrian green chippings - packs
	Rockery moorland black slate - 0.5 tonne
	18-24mm imported black stones - 36 packs
	35-50mm imported black stones - 28 packs
	50-150mm green paddle stones - 6 packs
	50-150mm black paddle stones - 9 packs
	Purple slate scree - 3-4" - 13 packs
	Purple slate scree, small - 17 packs
	250-350mm large multi-mix cobbles - 30 and 125-200mm small multi-mix cobbles - 50
	Multi-size reclaimed 'sets' (for walls)

The stone monoliths

Getting the delivered was another matter however! With nearly 6 tonnes of palleted stones how do you get them off the lorry? We solved the problem by hiring a fork-lift truck from a local hire centre at great expense - it needed to be of robust design as each pallet weighed in at 1 tonne.

The garden stones just after delivery by Border Stone.
There seemed to be an awful lot of stone!

Recently (November 20020 I managed to locate a suburb stockist of stones much nearing to my home. They stock lots and lots of large boulders and import many slabs and stone circles from India. Highly recommended...

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