5 Creative Ways to Incorporate Decorative Stones into Your Landscape Design
When it comes to making your landscape look beautiful and crisp, there is no better way to do this than to use decorative stones. While a fresh, green lawn and border beds with perennials and mulch are all going to play their parts, landscape stone is the product that gives backyards, lawns, gardens, patios, and more that unchangeable, finished look.
Need to know how to use decorative stone? Below are five creative ways to incorporate stones of all shapes and sizes in your landscape design.
1. Use for Ground Cover
One of the best ways to use landscape stones is for ground cover. If you have landscape features that need to be filled in with some ground cover, you can use small or large river rocks, black lava rocks, Mexican beach pebbles, or any other small rocks that fit your landscaping style and purposes.
These small landscaping stones are also great for use in garden beds as an alternative to mulch or for filling in the ground around potted plants. Unlike soil, mulch, or plants, using stones as ground cover means there is no maintenance needed.
2. Use for Edging
The second, and perhaps most universal, use for decorative stone is as edging and borders. Medium-size stones, like Tennessee cobblers and river flats, rip rap, or Wisconsin cobblers, can be used to create a stone border between garden beds and lawns or for bordering a walkway.
Likewise, larger stones, like granite boulders, Belgium block edgers, or featherock lightweight boulders, would make for an excellent tall border between spaces in your landscape that you want to make distinct from each other. Stones make an ideal separator between areas, and when used as edging, they make a space feel finished and complete.
3. Use to Create Walkways
While we are on the subject of borders and edging, now is a good time to talk about the third way to use decorative stones in a landscape–to create walkways. While you can use medium cobblers and large boulders to border a walkway, you will want to use flat, large stones for the path itself. Any flagstone, like laurel mountain, gray, or brown, would make for an excellent walkway surface. Alternatively, you could use smaller pavers or steppers. These flat stones can be used to create pathways throughout your landscape, connect spaces, and more.
Additionally, if your landscape has a small rise in the ground, you can use rustic buff natural steps or canyon gray natural steps to create a beautiful, natural-looking stone staircase.
4. Use to Create a Rock Wall
Fourth on the list is using decorative stones to create a rock wall. Wall stones, such as brown creek garden, laurel mountain, or rustic buff, can be used to build a rock wall to define spaces, build a retaining wall, or surround a patio or firepit area. Once you’ve created a rock wall, you can plant climbing or cascading plants that will add color and softness to the wall’s design.
5. Use to Build Settings
Finally, you can use decorative stones to build settings and structures in a landscape, such as fire pits, sitting areas, ponds, and water features, or simply as an accent. For example, you could use stones for a sitting area with a three-piece stone bench kit, like canyon gray benches. If a water feature is something you desire, you could use a bubbling boulder, which makes for a wonderful mini waterfall in a peaceful garden.
If these stone landscaping design ideas have inspired you to add decorative stones to your Indiana yard and garden, we at McCarty Mulch & Stone are here to help. Our wide range of rock and stone products means you are sure to find what you are looking for right here. Check out our collection today!
