If you have decided to xeriscape your yard, it is fairly easy to incorporate rocks into your overall landscaping design. However, if you want to keep more greenery in your landscape design while incorporating rocks, it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to brainstorming ideas.
Luckily, your neighborhood landscaping experts here at Stonetree are here to help! Below are some ways you can use rocks in your landscape design.
Opt For Rock Retaining Walls
One of the easiest ways to incorporate rocks into your landscaping is by using them as retaining walls. While this type of retaining wall should be no higher than 1-2 feet, a small rock retaining wall encircling a flower bed can be a very charming addition to your landscaping.
Also, for those who have a yard that slopes significantly, creating a steppe garden using rocks can help increase your planting space and help shore up the overall stability of the slope.
Choose Multiple Rock Colors And Create Patterns
Rocks don’t have to just be an accent to your overall landscape design. Instead, you can choose two or more colors and create striking patterns. Often, as you can see pictured above, you can use the rocks to highlight featured plants, adding some softness to your landscaping.
If you do opt for multiple rock colors, you may also want to use border bricks for greater contrast. It can be easy for the striking pattern you create to become blurred without borders, so to protect your landscaping vision, make sure that any brainstorming design includes some kind of divider.
Swap Mulch For Rocks
While mulch is a common filler among flower garden beds and around trees, you can swap out your mulch for rocks instead. Rather than needing to replace faded and missing mulch, rocks will retain their color and will only need the occasional shoring up to maintain a clean look.
Also, if you want to opt for low humidity plants like the succulents pictured above, you should definitely choose rocks over mulch. With mulch, water can be trapped and overall humidity raised, which can rot the roots of cacti and succulents. By having rocks, you allow for better soil drainage.
Use Rocks To Create A Border
Smaller plants like developing shrubs and groundcover flowering plants can merge into your main lawn, creating an unintentionally messy look. To help provide some structure to your landscape design, you can use rocks to create a border.
If you have larger plants—such as shrubs—the bordering rocks should be between the size of a baseball and a bowling ball. The more variation between the sizes of your border rocks, the more cottage-like an image your landscaping can take. For less obtrusive plants that are low to the ground, to create a border between the grass and plants, you can use rocks that are between the size of a lemon and a grapefruit.
Set Up Feature Boulders
One or two large boulders can act as a focal point for your landscape design. If you choose a local red-colored boulder as a landscape centerpiece, you can enjoy a truly striking contrast with the rest of the greenery in your yard.
Also, you can have a feature boulder serve double duty in your landscaping and have it also be a fountain. There are simple kits that allow you to make a boulder into a fountain yourself, or you can purchase a premade boulder fountain.
However, if you opt to make your feature boulder into a fountain, it is best that you not use a sandy or porous stone like sandstone, as the water will erode the rock. Instead, granite is generally best for being made into a fountain.
Make A Stone Path
A charming look to incorporate into your landscape design is stone pathways. You can easily opt for bricks for a more even and uniform look. Though, if you are shooting for a more whimsical, cottage look, then choosing stepping stones and spacing them out slightly through your grass can help achieve this look.
It is best that you avoid using gravel to create your stone path. Loose gravel and rocks tend to shift underfoot and can lead to injuries due to unsteady footing.
If you would like expert help implementing your landscape design, contact us here at Stonetree. We are ready to bring your ideal landscaping to life!
