Landscaping With Stone - Natural Paving Stones To Choose

Landscaping with stone is my first choice for my Clients.

Although projects can be very nice when other paving materials are used, natural stone in the landscape creates a very special project.

But how do you go about choosing the garden stone and come up with good stone landscaping ideas?

Landscaping with stone is not an easy task, particularly when you are combing different types of landscape features such as landscape walls, patio designs, walkways, and landscape steps. In addition, your stone landscaping ideas must take into account the material that your house is, such as wood or vinyl siding, cedar shakes, brick, stone, etc.

I have written about one of my projects and how I went about coordinating the various stone in the project. You can read about it on my page: Landscape With Natural Stone

Landscape Retaining Walls

There are many types of stone available if you want to landscape with natural stone and many stone landscaping ideas. Often stone suppliers have give the stone they carry their own names, so it is difficult to just learn about a type and then ask for it. The best thing to do is to visit the stone supplier.

Stones come in many sizes and colors, all natural of course.

Patio and Walkway Ideas

Once again, there are many types stone to choose from when landscaping with stone.

Travertine pavers are probably the most reasonably priced. They are quite beautiful. They are actually natural travertine stone that has been cut into regular shapes for easy installation.

Bluestone comes in many shapes and sizes, whether it is geometric or free-form. Tennessee Crab Orchard stone is a beautiful color. It ranges from rust to peach to tan. It is one of the softer stone, however, and may flake over time. Idaho Quartz is a very hard stone. The color is shades of gray with some tans. It does have some "glitz" to it (it glitters slightly).

Stone Installation Methods

Patio stones can be either dry laid or wet laid.

Dry Laid

This is the easier installation and less expensive. Typically a loose stone base is added on top of undisturbed or tamped ground. If ground has been disturbed, ground must be tamped down in lifts of approximately 8" each.

The loose stone layer depth can vary, but usually it is 4 to 8" thick. A sand layer is applied over the stone base. The stones lay on top of this. Joints may be very close and sand swept or they may have a small gravel added for larger joints. Here is my detailed page on paver installations.

Wet Laid

This may be done in various ways, but to give you a simple summary.....A concrete base is poured. Stone is layed on top of this and joints are mortared. This must be done correctly in order for cracks not to appear and for joints to be attractive and not sloppy.

Landscape Steps

Landscape steps should coordinate with whatever paving is near it. The risers can be natural stone with the same stone used for the treads. Or the treads may be bluestone. The bluestone can be divided into pieces or one long individual piece. You can read more about landscape steps here.

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