Garden is a luxury if you have passed sometimes in congested urban areas. Depends on the size of your property, you can cultivate your garden small or big and introduce a number of facilities in it, such as you can grow grass soothing your leg skin, and herbs, shrubs, and trees to yield natural beauty.
The vegetables can reach your kitchen and fruits to rich your health. You can create decent layouts with some plants. You can create a patio to enjoy parties with your guests. Swimming pool to get refresh and recreate yourself.
Unfortunately, only plants, herbs, shrubs, and trees are not enough to beautify your garden. They could grow wild and demand a lot of mending each day or weekend. It is hardscape you are missing to design your garden properly and boost its utility at new heights.
Hardscape can add balance and focus in your landscape. Many hardscape components like various types of stones serve as a focal point, delineates, bring dimensionality, and add spacious feelings.
So, the current post is introducing natural stone as an excellent choice for your hardscape need to decorate and beautify your garden. Let me offer you at least eight (8) different ways to choose the right stones for your garden in 2019.
For the sake of better understanding the stones, I would classify them into two, whole stones and crushed stones.
- Whole stones may be cubes & veneer including tiles and slabs.
- Crushed stones may be gravels, pebbles, cobbles, and boulders.
|
Whole Stones Cubes
|
Whole Stones Veneer
|
 |
 |
Crushed stones differ in size and shapes. For instance,
- Gravel – >2mm or -1f (Phi) scale
- Pebble – >4mm or -2f (Phi) scale
- Cobble – >64mm or -6f (Phi) scale
- Boulder – >256mm or -8f (Phi) scale
| Gravel |
Pebble |
 |
 |
| Cobble |
Boulder |
 |
 |
No. 1 – Choose Natural Stones When You Need a Style in the Garden
Across the globe, various home garden styles are prevailing. The major styles are Japanese Garden, Zen/Chinese gardens, English gardens, French garden, rock gardens, and American common garden styles.
Japanese and Chinese Garden Styles:
 |
Japanese and Chinese garden styles are consisting of small whole stones or naturally crushed stones like gravels, pebbles, and boulders extensively. The create paths with small stones to enable walking. Big rocks with irregular symmetry are giving anchor points for greenery to grow. Flat big slabs act as bridges between two big rocks and simulate dry stream or river! |
English Style Gardens:
| English style gardens predominantly incorporate whole formal stones like flagstones in paths. They use boulders in long sweeps of lawn or planting beds to create focal points. Big rocks here and there create disruption in design make the garden design more natural than it is. |
 |
French Style Gardens:
 |
In French style gardens, paths are entirely covered with gravels like tiny stone elements to ease walk and play of kids. The path gravels used to extend up to patio and cover patio space with evenly distributed gravels and pebbles of comparatively smaller sizes. The color borders between gravels and pebble spaces ending with unique design layouts and patterns. |
No. 2 – Choose Natural Stones When You Need a Slope in the Garden
If you plan your garden design without proper slopes at landscape engineering point of view, you may face the following issues.
- Water may clog around your home exterior faces and damage your foundation walls.
- Excessive water in some regions or areas in the garden, particularly during heavy rains can damage plantations belong to those areas.
- Accumulation of excessive water in paths or walkways make moving daunting.
- The pool of excessive water nearby boundary walls can damage walls and grass or plantations there.
In such conditions, pea gravel, beach or river pebbles, and gravel slits are excellent choices for crushed stone requirements. Lying flat flagstones as stepping stones on the bed of crushed stones are providing smooth and dry walk even during rainy days. Let’s check where natural stones play vital parts to offer you viable drainage solutions.
Landscaping Using Natural Stones:
 |
The fertile land of the garden contains clay and sand as the major components. Therefore, the porosity of land becomes the main cause of water drains issue from the surface to subsoil. If you have used gravels and combination of pebbles, boulders, and flagstones with proper slopes, whatever types of your sub-soil, water will not retain and clog your garden at all. |
French Drains:
| Sometimes a simple layer of crushed stones or gravels is not working to drain the water. Moreover, the application of large scale gravels is not possible according to the designs and needs of the garden. In such cases, additional privilege is French drains. It is a gravel-filled trench constructed with the aim to direct the water away from the sever accumulation areas. To make it effective, a perforated drainage pipe also fitted under the gravels in the trench. |
 |
Natural Stones in Raised Beds:
 |
Raised beds are automatically solving the problems of drainage if designed smartly. If you raise the bed above 18 inches, a layer of gravel at the bottom is essential beneath the topsoil to overcome water accumulation issues. Borders with big stone cubes and coping with stone veneer give you the opportunity to decorate your plantation beds as well as increase its utility to seat on the top coping layer and get relaxed. |
Natural Stones in Plant Containers:
| Many xerophyte plants need almost dry soil atmosphere to grow and sustain. Therefore, their containers need to fill up with more gravels/pea gravels and less soil with proper drainage to drain water quickly. Similarly, if plant pots have gravels or pebbles at the bottom and soil at the top, water clogging never becomes an issue. |
 |
No. 3 – Choose Natural Stones When You Need to Control Weeds in the Garden
Haphazard weed growth is a big nuisance in creating a beautiful garden. Weedicides is not an organic remedy. Therefore, gardeners are looking for an effective solution to control the weeds in non-planted areas.
Earlier we were using bark mulch to suppress the germination and growth of weed plants. Today we have an excellent alternative in the form of slate chips to win the battle against weed. Broken pieces of slate stones used to come in grey, blue, and red colors.
No. 4 – Choose Natural Stones When You Are Going to Create Walkways or Driveway across the Garden
Most of the gardens contain one or more paths or walkways to ease roaming across the garden and transit equipment, wastage trolley, land or manure trolleys, and so on from regions to regions. Natural whole stones and crushed stones enable us to get design variation as per our tastes, such as:
 |
Path with Whole Stones:
If you have a budget and you wish to decorate your garden paths by exclusive ways, whole stones like slate, granite, limestone, and flagstone slabs are excellent choices.
|
Path with Crushed Stones:
Crushed stones like pea gravels are excellent material to design smooth and easy going walkways in the garden. Some are using slate chips with smaller size along with gravel and pebbles to create designs or pattern on the walkway.
|
 |
 |
Driveway with Cobblestones:
Cobblestone made from natural stones is the sturdiest material used for driveways since long. Today, we have a variety of stones available in different sizes, facets, and colors to create sumptuous designs for your driveway construction passing through your garden.
|
Path with Mix (Crushed + Whole) Stones:
If you are comfortable with stepping stones and want to enjoy the charm of crushed and whole stones in your path construction, make a wise combination of both.
Gravels come with a variety of colors and sizes while flagstone, slate, or local stones in irregular shapes and sizes are the best choice to create a matching or contrasting theme for your garden paths. Stepping stones are an excellent choice during wet days or in water clogging areas.
|
 |
No.5 – Choose Natural Stones When You Are Going to Create Patio in the Garden
Apart from backyard patio and deck, garden patio is considering a more alluring option. It provides more freedom and room to arrange various recreational activities for your family and parties for your guests. Natural stones are the most desirable material for patio construction.
Flagstones from slates are widely used natural stones. Granite, limestone, travertine, and sandstones are also trendy material for patio construction. Some small to big size patios also include crushed stones like pea gravels to design patios in a combination of whole stones. Some garden patios have pergola like beautiful covering that adds a sense of isolation in a rich garden and protection from climate adversities.
No.6 – Choose Natural Stones When You Are Going to Create Fire Features in the Garden
Fire pits in the garden provide luxury in a cold climate. Common dim rocks are highly used the material to cover the floor of the pit and cobbles are provided ideal surfaces to deal with raised fire to pit.
Siliceous stones like granite and sandstones are in demand to cover fireplaces with chimney. It provides heat resistance ambiance as well as create a cozy environment to warm in cold weather along with family and friends.
Click here to continue reading