Hey Mort,Hi Andrew, as you know I'm not an aquascaper so take what you want from my comments.
First I'd decide if this was loosely based on nature or trying to replicate it closer. By that I mean, I'd expect the wall to be bigger if it was natural, simply going by the size of the tree.
I've also spend a lot of time in the lake district and although agree with you that wall are different throughout the country, they don't tend to be as uniform as yours, at least in my head. What you have is a very skillfully built wall but natural walls are built with whatever rocks are around, therefore not as uniform.
The last point is where the coping stones have been dislodged by the tree limb, I think there should be more damage that's less uniform. I'd try a larger bite out of the main wall with angled damage a bit like you could imagine where sheep jump from field to field.
Nature or natural things as I understand are non man made so any kind of attempt at a dry stone wall will never be a natural thing, on account of this alone it will never be trying to replicate nature.
I'm well aware the wall looks very uniform but realistically I don't have the skillset or time to make anything much more realistic looking so using roughly uniform shapes as a basis I think are the best way forward for me.
A lot of the wall will also be lost with planting so by the time I have added the remaining coping stones, caused the damage from the fallen tree and also around the tree trunk I think it could look ok.
I think the main thing about this wall is it's not a natural thing.I've said this before a long time ago but I think what EdVet is saying is similar to what I have said. Amano made natural scapes that let you decide what they were. Vague if you like. They suggest something. The Diorama which tend to dominate the competitions now try to replicate. They remove the ambiguity and thus what you see is what it is.
With that in mind your direction will take the scape in one direction or another. Yes there is no getting away from "that is a wall" but a wall doing what? A wall where? What is behind, to the left. You can have things like your wall that cannot be anything but a wall but that doesn't mean that you then have to continue this (direct instruction) across the scape.
I argued this before in terms of "art or craft" where I argued that if you remove the element of interpretation then you move too close to instructing the viewer that "this is X, no argument. In my opinion."
The counter to my argument was/is photography is art, lifelike sculpture is art.
For me personally I like to be able to use my own imagination rather than what is put in front of me saying "you are viewing X. It is X. There is no argument other than this is X."
Maybe you could explain to me a bit more in a laymen's term what you mean - I'm maybe not understanding what you mean e.g. (direct instruction) or you are viewing X etc
I am interested to hear what you have to say.
Andrew
I've not really done much else, just having a toy around with a few bits and other ideas I've got. The wall has never been anything I've decided will stay but I do like the idea of it and as I've said before I think when the plants are grown in and those few details added the uniformity will not be so noticeable. Maybe I could be completely wrong about this?!Hi Andrew,
Have you any photos of updates , I think it’s productive to as much as possible try out as much ideas.One thought though always best to make as natural as possible/ blend into nature. My daughter try to persuade me to add a sponge bob square pants into my current nature style aqua 600 scape - its not going to be happening
I do think that there could be an aquarium that looked tactful with such details and does not 100% resemble nature.
Something not normally done but it's still a planted aquarium and that's what this forum is all about isn't it?