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Landscaping Ideas That Use Stones

Introduction

There are many ways of adding dimension and depth to your yard. One of them includes using a lot of rocks and stones in fun ways. If you need to do the same for your yard, you can search for “paving companies near me” and hire professionals for the job. Let’s check out a few interesting landscaping ideas that use stones.

The Ideas

  1. Be one with nature – If you have a lot of natives and green cover in your garden and yard, it’s best to preserve that with a more naturalistic design. Instead of using precisely cut stones and rocks, you can use rough slabs of stones and rocks to pave a path through your green sanctuary. This makes the path look more natural and suggests that there has been minimal human intervention in the landscape design.

You can take the naturalistic look up a notch by edging the path with bounders, pebbles, and gravel. This also creates a more sustainable landscape design since the hard and porous rocks soak in water and allow it to seep into the ground instead of running off the side.

You can also build a rock garden out of natural and local stones to take up the sustainability even higher. Local and natural stones have been weathered for many years to create exquisite textures and don’t need to be transported over thousands of miles in large containers by burning fossil fuels. To soften the look of your rock garden, you can add natives on the edges. This helps you establish a coherent yet informal space. Make sure that the plants you choose for the soft edging match or complement the shade of rocks. 

  1. Stones in an urban and modern setting – In urban and modern landscape design, smooth surfaces and clean lines always dominate. However, you can maximize interest and texture in the urban landscape design by introducing contrasting materials like stones. You need to make sure that the stones have a contemporary yet contrasting color.

If there’s a space in your modern landscape where there’s a gap between raised beds and a smooth paved path, you can use charcoal-colored stones as edging material. You can always find charcoal-colored pebbles of various sizes for the job. Moreover, these pebbles come in their natural rough surface and in polished variations. They can help create stunning color contrast in your modern landscaping project. 

  1. Easy low-maintenance landscape – If you’re confused about how to use stones in your landscape design, it’s best to go for a low-maintenance rock garden. This kind of landscape is dominated by stones and pebbles with soft plant cushions in between. This type of landscape design can be left to its own whims to create a more natural look and doesn’t require a lot of maintenance as long as you choose plants that are suited for the soil and your local climate.

In this type of landscape design, you allow nature to be your landscape architect. You leave the ground cover to evolve every year instead of trying to create a picture-perfect design. Just make sure to choose non-invasive native plants or those that have adapted to the local conditions over several years. That way you won’t need to worry about soft ground cover dying off without water.

  1. River stones – Everyone has been curious about river stones every time they have had a chance to camp next to a river in the wilderness. River stones are usually made of limestone and other hard-wearing materials that maintain their appearance for decades with little to no maintenance. You can use them in the water features on your landscape to make it look like they have always been there.

Moreover, river stones only improve over time with more complex crevices and curves as they are weathered by natural elements. You can create a realistic stream with river rocks in your garden. The base of the stream can be made from mortar and gravel with a low-lying shallow area for wildlife to drink and bathe in. you can press on the gravel and cover it up with river stones to create that natural look. To take that look to a whole new level you can also add a few broken tree trunks with moss right next to the stream.

  1. Mix textures – Landscape designers always like to mix different textures and materials to add visual interest to their design. You can do the same with rocks and stones. Moreover, you don’t need to be limited by natural stones either. It can be a mix of both natural and artificial materials. That means you can mix pavers and flagstones with natural stones and river rocks.

If you have smooth slabs, you can fill in the edging around them with gravel and small stones or boulders. This makes that path itself more interesting and attracts a lot of attention instead of being just a path between two interesting features of your landscape. You can also take inspiration from the Japanese garden and create a pebble path with paddle stones. They are large pieces of slate that have rounded edges and can be used to create a path that mimics a riverbed.

  1. Enhance drama – If you have a lot of plants creating soft sweeps on your landscape, consider adding large boulders or stones to the design. This type of design takes inspiration from Victorian gardens and helps create a lot of drama. You can also group smaller stones with larger rocks to create natural clusters and bed those clusters into the soil. The large rocks create height and slope in favor of a cleaner design with less fuss and a generous dose of impact.

Conclusion

Your landscape design should reflect your personality. If you have a large property, rocks and stones can be a great way of adding layers, depth, and complexity to the landscape. If you need to hire professional help for the job, you can always search for “paving companies near me”.