Passionate gardeners subscribe to glossy magazines with opulent color ranges of rediscovered ranunculus for a lot of money.

They make a pilgrimage to garden fairs to make their little paradise behind or in front of the house a little bit more paradisiacal.

Others have neither the time nor the point and therefore rely on the robust trio of lavender, hydrangea and cherry laurel.

For others, that is too much of a good thing.

Put on ground cover or frugal evergreen?

Nope, too herbaceous.

Purists create gravel gardens, and this is how it works: Put out the lawn, flatten the area, put foil on it and pour stones.

Black gravel is preferred, gray tones also work, as in the commercial area.

Very creative people then draw in patterns and fill a circle with white pebbles, edged with marble.

Ursula Kals

Editor in business, responsible for “Young People Write”.

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Where on earth do these stone friends get their inspiration from?

Evil people speculate that they are stimulated by cemeteries, specifically by easy-care graves.

The design highlights in the gravel garden are topiary trees, conifers or box trees, accurately trimmed.

Still, the whole thing looks bare.

You need an eye-catcher, a large stone, a planted concrete ring without a plant, a green glass crystal, a stone pillar, perhaps a metal lantern - there are suggestions on the disturbingly grandiose blog “Gardens of Horror”.

Low-maintenance rock gardens are a myth

This is not only a thorn in the side of the climate activist in the Aachen suburb. “The question is who is digging his own grave!” Shaking her head, she stares over the gabions, wire baskets filled with stones where a hedge used to be. The proud “Everything is fully sealed, no blade of grass can get through!” Shouldn't come off the lips of the rabid gravel gardener quite so fluffily after the flood disaster when he polishes the crumpled stones with a high-pressure cleaner every few weeks. Because it is a myth that these rock gardens are easy to care for.

The parking bay in front of the house seems even more practical.

From the breakfast table, your gaze falls straight to the hood.

Depending on the parking talent, people like to decorate it, two or three metal balls or a teasing little ceramic frog can be.

There is no room for living animals.

Not a butterfly.

Nowhere.

Diagonally opposite in the neighborhood there are stone slabs instead of a front garden and an eye-catcher an exposed aggregate concrete bucket with embedded gravel.

Such buckets in the 1970s memory look make dead inner-city pedestrian zones without pedestrians even a little more dead.

Many passers-by shake their heads.

What is a sin to one is a nightingale to another.

This is Low German and means there is no arguing about taste.

Probably about species loss and overheated cities.