Rocky River Beds

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Rocky River Beds
There're a couple of things related to desert gardening that cost money and can make a sane gardener cringe as he or she pulls out the wallet, check or credit card. The first is manure, the common soil additive rich in organic matter. You can pay anywhere from 60 cents or more per bag especially if it's been deodorized. Quite frankly it's a bunch of waste material and you're paying for it. It's good waste, but costly waste. That bothers this desert gardener but it's necessary to enrich the desert soil, encourage decomposition in the compost pile and it's a way of recycling.

The other costly and abundantly used desert gardening landscaping item is stone - all kinds of stone from crushed to boulder size. The material is used as ground cover, bank enforcement (riprap), a landscaping tool, path maker and the overly used drive, walk and property outlining tool. Rock in different shapes, size and color is found everywhere in Tucson landscapes.

A combination rocky river bed and ground cover. It doesn't look like something you'd want to walk on.
Bob's Material Supply offered displays of available materials and an easy to read price list for the do-it-yourselfer.

Another popular usage for stone, especially where the property has a slope, is as a drainage tool. Like a miniature Sabino Canyon the rocks outline the manmade river bed which may be strictly ornamental or which may serve as a way of directing runoff after one of our summer monsoon down pours.

Having contemplated the construction of a dry rocky river bed for outside the Tucson Gardener's office window I decided to see how I'd go about getting the building material.

First, I needed some indication of the length and width of my proposed river bed so I outlined the site and then took measurements with a tape measure. Next I headed off to Bob's Material Supply because I'd used the company before and the business was in reasonable driving distance.

Outside Bob's is a small protective stand where I picked up a flyer that gave the different costs for materials and an indication of the coverage expected per cubic yard. There was also a display of material. It didn't take long to figure out that I wanted the three to eight-inch Salt River rock for my project that cost $22 per cubic yard. There'd be an additional $12 for delivery of the three yards I thought I needed. If I'd wanted help, I could have gone inside Bob's and talked with someone but at the time I felt confident I knew what I wanted so I got back in my truck and picked up two bails of straw for my vegetable garden and compost bin on the way home.

The next day I was out on my bicycle cruising the neighborhood looking for less than perfectly pruned trees for the pruning article that appears in this issue of The Tucson Gardener when I came upon a pile of Salt River Rock. I pulled out my camera to take a picture because I never know when I might need an image of a pile of rocks to illustrate a story for The Tucson Gardener.

Off to my right a gentleman stacked the rock as riprap along a loop asphalt driveway he'd recently had installed. I pedaled over and told him I lived in the neighborhood and was contemplating getting some Salt River rock for a project. He'd been working on his for over a month and had used nearly eight yards of material. He admitted he was ready to finish the project and move on to something else and we both decided the project, any project using lots of heavy stone, wasn't for the faint of heart.

I peddled home and studied the area I'd planned to build my dry riverbed. After a few moments of serious thought and the realization how how much back breaking work was involved I came to the conclusion there was too much rock in the neighborhood already. I didn't need my dry, rocky river bed at this time but when and if I ever did, I knew I could make one. (1999)