The few times that I have arranged rocks in my gardens, I have tried to make them look natural and random, and they never do. There is not much to do in the garden now, so I have been organizing my digital photos (working my way up to 2009) and was reminded that natural landscapes can also be highly ordered and look non-natural. I did some field work at Station Nord (Northeast Greenland) where the permafrost ground is patterned in many places. Rocks, gravel and sand are nicely sorted according to size by repeated freeze-thaw cycles and placed in polygons with the smaller particles at the centre. The rest is cold, flat gravel left by the ice, no mountains, no large rocks (quite like my front drive), plain gravel km after km. There are few plants, but Cerastium alpinum (alpine mouse-ear), Papaver radicatum (arctic poppy, one of the more than 70 subspecies), Saxifraga oppositifolia (purple mountain saxifrage) and a few others are common in depressions and other sheltered spots. It would be nice if others would also uploade pictures of ordered landscapes for inspiration.
Anders
