River rocks provide a natural and earthy feel to flower beds, helping to maintain soil moisture and reduce weeds. They can be used as a border or placed around plants to create a Zen garden. River rocks can be used as pebbles, stones, or larger rocks and boulders to create an organic feel in outdoor spaces. The soil will sink over time, allowing compost to be added to the top. River rocks can also be used as mulch to surround and define gardens, with colors that complement the plants.
To create a garden bed with river rocks, remove debris from the area and remove weeds and grass. Use river rocks as an inorganic mulch to spruce up garden beds, and fill them with soil, compost, and plants. Mulch is a convenient option, and happy planting!
To create a garden bed with river rocks, remove debris from the area, remove weeds and grass, and create a raised bed planter, suitable staging, dapper, dryscaping, fairy fire pit, and negative attitude. Once the garden bed is created, fill it with soil, compost, and plants, and remember to mulch. Happy planting!
📹 DIY Rock Landscaping Idea | River Rock | No Fabric | Hide Trash Cans
This is a simple DIY project really anyone could do. So I decided to try using river rock landscaping (without landscping fabric) …
What is the best use for river rock?
River rocks can be used as a natural design element in garden beds, providing a harmonious space for plants and blooms. They come in various sizes and colors, and are prized for their attractive appearance, durability, and versatility. River rocks can be used in various landscaping ideas, such as pathways, garden beds, water features, Zen gardens, and fire pits, to enhance the design of your outdoor space. They can also help retain water and suppress weed growth, making them an attractive and durable choice for your landscape.
Can I put river rock around plants?
River rocks can add weight to plants, potentially damaging delicate new shoots. Established trees and shrubs are not affected by river rocks, but smaller, fragile plants should be allowed to grow without a small gap between the rocks and the plant’s base. Rocks, stones, and pebbles can add beauty, depth, and character to various plant types in a landscape. For high-quality stones, including pure gold river rock and white pebbles, contact RS and P Rock Stones and Pebbles, a premier landscape rock and supply superstore. Contact their friendly team at 380-0580 to create the landscape of your dreams.
What not to fill a raised garden bed with?
Raised beds, particularly small and shallow ones under 12 inches deep, should be filled with soil to avoid interference with plant root growth and water drainage. Bagged raised bed potting mix is commonly used in small raised beds, but can be purchased in bulk from local landscape companies or made by blending topsoil, compost, and sand. Alternatively, the Lasagna Garden Method can be used to fill large raised beds with other materials, such as in-ground gardens or raised beds, to create a more cost-effective and efficient gardening solution. Both methods can help maintain the soil and water balance in the soil, ensuring optimal plant growth and drainage.
Should I put rocks in my raised garden bed?
Gravel is often recommended to improve drainage in raised beds, but it may not be the most effective method. The raised bed structure itself should create good drainage for plants, and a layer of gravel may hinder deeper root structures. Instead, use good soil and compost to fill the beds. A thin layer of gravel at the bottom and under the edges is recommended to level the area, while the rest should be used for garden pathways.
To keep pests out of raised beds, add hardware cloth across the bottom and follow it with landscape fabric for weed control. This provides protection without compromising good drainage or the organic nature of your kitchen garden. The author’s opinions are based on their own experiences and opinions, and some links in this article are Amazon affiliate links.
Is it okay to put rocks on top of soil?
Decorative rocks are a cost-effective and effective method for reducing erosion, preventing weed growth, and maintaining a well-maintained landscape. They prevent wind from scattering soil, and cover topsoil with them to reduce rainfall and watering. They also block sunlight in areas where it isn’t needed, making it difficult for weeds to penetrate and establish roots. To use decorative rocks, remove existing weeds in the area and ensure they completely cover the desired areas.
To prevent weed growth, use varying sizes of decorative rocks and spread them out in layers. This simple and cost-effective solution can help maintain a well-maintained landscape without the need for regular weeding.
What is best to put under river rock?
Woven stabilization fabric is a suitable choice for driveways, paths, and patios as an underlayment and soil stabilizer. It is less permeable than nonwoven fabric, so gravel surfaces must be crowned to allow water to drain off the project area. Nonwoven fabric is suitable for paths, patios, and playgrounds with permeable gravel, clean crushed gravel, pea gravel, or drain rock. The fabric creates separation between the rock and subgrade, not providing structural support.
It is also suitable for rock landscaping, where water can drain into the subgrade below the rocks without structural support. Woven fabric is best for areas with structural support or graded to allow water to drain away. Proper installation is crucial to avoid tearing and a shorter lifespan. This typically involves removing weeds, leveling the ground, overlapping fabric sections, pinning it with staples, cutting holes for plants, and covering the fabric with gravel, landscape rock, and mulch.
How to make river rock look better?
River rocks are exposed to dust, mud, decaying leaves, and moss buildup, which can cause them to look dull. To maintain their shine, sunlight needs to reach the surface to reflect back the colors. A good rainstorm is usually enough to wash away surface debris, but sometimes natural help is needed. A water hose with a sprayer can be used to wash away dust and dirt. If the rocks accumulate more dirt than a sprayer can remove, a mixture of gentle soap and water can be used to loosen hardened dirt.
A stiff-bristled brush or broom can be used to scrub the rocks. The soapy water can then be rinsed off. River rocks, like polished black, look better when wet because the water creates a smoother surface that allows sunlight to hit it just right. When choosing river rocks, consider how water affects the color, as knowing how they will glow in the water can help make a decision regarding the type and color.
What plants look best in river rock?
Succulents are a popular choice for river rock landscaping due to their low maintenance and drought-resistant nature. Popular plants like Echeveria, Sedum, and Agave are known for their unique shapes and colors, making them an excellent addition to outdoor spaces. Combining river rocks with succulents offers several benefits, including low maintenance, drought resistance, and a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes.
Succulents can be used as ground cover, rock gardens, or accent plants, and are easy to propagate, allowing for easy expansion and filling of empty spaces without the need for additional plants. Overall, combining river rocks and succulents in landscaping can create visually striking landscape designs and provide a sustainable and visually appealing addition to your outdoor space.
What looks good with river rock?
Xeriscape gardening in low rainfall areas is ideal for river rock design, as it allows for the growth of drought-tolerant plants like euphorbia. The stone’s excellent conductivity helps cool off at night, and succulents thrive in gravel due to their native desert climate. These plants thrive in rocky environments, providing excellent drainage and heat preservation. River rocks have flat sides, making them easy to stack and form sculptures. These sculptures can be placed throughout the garden, on a table, or next to the entrance.
How do you take care of river rocks?
The most effective method for cleaning river rocks is to use a mixture of water, vinegar, and a stiff brush. First, remove any debris or loose dirt from the surface of the rocks. Then, mix equal parts water and white vinegar in a spray bottle and spray the solution over the rocks. Scrub the rocks using a stiff-bristled brush until they are clean. Rinse thoroughly with water and allow them to dry completely before use. Avoid using harsh chemicals or pressure washers as they can damage the rocks and surrounding areas.
Preparing for cleaning river rocks involves clearing the area, inspecting for sensitive plants or wildlife, gathering necessary tools and materials, removing loose dirt and debris, and rinsing with water. This will make it easier to clean the rocks later and prepare them for a deeper cleaning.
In summary, cleaning river rocks in your garden is a rewarding and satisfying task that requires proper preparation. By following these steps, you can ensure that your rocks are ready for a thorough cleaning process.
What can I make with river rocks?
River rock landscape ideas offer a wide range of possibilities for landscaping your backyard. These ideas include creating a dry creek bed, paving, retaining walls, sprucing up garden beds, xeriscaping, pathways, lawn edging, firepit areas, and water features. The color and size variety of river rocks provide endless design options. Some ideas include crafting a retaining wall or water fountain, highlighting fire pits and garden beds, and creating a pathway.
River rocks are not specific to a river, but can come from any body of water, including rounded, rubbed, or worn rocks from moving water. These ideas can help narrow your choices and create a unique and visually appealing landscape.
📹 Preparing a GARDEN BED for landscape ROCK
I show how I prepare a garden bed using plastic with flowers already planted. Then I fill cobble rock in the garden. Cobble Rock …
After a number of months of drought and triple degree temps here in Texas, I finally started gradually turning to Xeriscaping. I took my struggling ivy out that ran the length of my house and put down Canadian Large rocks which are in beautiful earth tones. Now, looking at it, I wish I had done it years ago. The ivy was nice, but, I have tons of trees and you can’t get leaves out of ivy. If you use a blower, it sends the leaves deeper into the ivy, if I use a rake, I’m tearing off the leaves of the ivy. Now I have the stone down, I put two giant terracotta planters on top one with a palm in it the other I planted about 15 jumbo Caladiums in Florida Elise, and it looks just stunning. Little by little I’m adding areas of stones/rocks simply because I believe in conserving water, and you can always add decorative planters, or garden concrete statuary. You did a great job, it looks nice and neat with just enough color in the stones to make it interesting. About landscaper fabric, a landscaper told me it doesn’t stop weeds because airborne weeds germinate on top of the fabric. I never thought about that.
What caught my eye here was the no fabric in the title. Bought a house 15 years ago with large yard areas and that had a stone/rock covered area with fabric underneath. Did not find the fabric barriers really did much, over time dirt settles in the rocks and weeds grow and the fabric inhibited the spread of the various plantings which you want to spread. Over time I have actually pulled up much of the fabric because it was easier to deal with the weeds and for greater spread of wanted plantings. Intuitively I would expect putting fabric underneath but my experience is again is do not bother. Also found fabric was not a water saver.
Use a preemergent, you wont have to deal with any weeds, either granular or a liquid. I have a rock garden in sun and shade about 3,500 sq ft, I switch up the preemergent from one brand to the next sometimes using using two in late winter to early spring, than one application first week in September. This works really well, just make sure whatever you use is meant for landscaping and not turf only. The cheap route is Preen all the time
Looks great! I’d rather not use herbicides since they’re terrible for the environment. Weeds always grow back so you have to continually apply herbicides. I think I’d prefer using a weed barrier or commit to hand weeding. Unlike mulch, rocks are more difficult to weed so that’s the drawback to using them. But rocks look a lot better!
At first i was devastated that you were pulling out all those beautiful hosts!!! glad you reused them-could also have sold them to recoup some of the expenses really. love the final lock. you say the mini cobble is about $55/ton where you got it–curious as to about how much that was that you had delivered? not a full ton i would think-maybe 1/4-1/2 ton? love that rock and will look for it when doing my garden project. Thanks for inspiration!
I’m replenishing the front landscaping on my house with new river rock. The previous owners used river rock some 35 years ago, and they also used a plastic barrier. I’m replacing & repeating their original idea as shrubbery has become way too big & overgrown, have worn and the rock has settled well into the dirt surface. They, as well as me for the past 6 years, never bothered to remove fall leaves from the rock, so now the river rocks have settled into 35 years of muck, so to speak. I’m investing in a leaf blower and intend to use it several times throughout the fall and early winter seasons. Nice article, too, btw!
I’m doing a similar project with old river rock for landscaping and pea gravel for a trash can area. You can use cardboard boxes or even newspaper as a weed barrier. Just cut it to the shapes you need and lay it down, dump the gravel on top and no more weeds. Works great and it’s completely maintenance free so far!
I did something similar with our garbage cans. Old owners had a bunch of skinny pavers for a mulch barrier that I pulled out. Laid those down under where the cans go to give them a platform. Then I had 2 scrap 2x6s for the posts and old 6′ deck boards that I screwed on horizontally. Very clever idea!
You did such an awesome job everything looks great I would suggest get rid of the round up that stuff is toxic and it gets in the soil most weeds will die just by spraying them with vinegar and if you don’t want to use vinegar when you boil water for vegetables or anything or just boil the water itself and then dump it on the weeds the boil water will kill them without any chemicals thank you for all the ideas with the Rocks I plan on trying some of those
Planning on hopefully building a big badass garage probably spring 2023. Remainder of 2021 and all 2022 I’m planning on saving like a fiend to get demo my current 1981 built garage and build AT LEAST a 1000 sqft… ideally 30×40 – 1200 sqft, big beautiful post frame, insulated, temp controlled garage….. in addition to redoing my backyard landscape. I’m thinking the bulk of the budget will be on the garage as I plan to do a vast majority, if not all the landscaping myself. Landscaping is pretty damn easy. It’s just hard ass labor and extremely dirty – which I don’t mind. All that pointlessly said….. every place I’ve lived has used rock instead of mulch. My parents growing up preferred rock to mulch. As a result – I prefer rock over mulch. That said…. everywhere I’ve seen or had rock it always had plastic underneath it and at every place you always had spots where the plastic would pop up and be exposed. Also…… every place even with plastic always had weed issues. So in my very…. VEEEERY early stages of planning this project out (18 months out likely) I’ve been thinking……. do you even need plastic…. or what I think is properly called “landscape fabric.” I personally don’t think you do. But I’ve never seen it done without it…. until this article. All i can say definitively is that even with it….. you still will always….. ALWAYS get weeds. And when you go to pull them that’s usually what pulls the plastic up. You’ll cover it back up but once pulled up once it always seems to creep itself back up either with more weeds or some other dark forces at work cause the plastic to rise, Haha.
Thanks so much for doing this article. Ive wanted to do something similar but was unsure about the weed situation (considering I wanted it to look nice and neat with minimal maintenance). Im definitley going ahead with this now. Im going to check out your other articles too. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge. 🌴🌴🌴
Looks fab…and I love your presentation…it’s real and down to earth (forgive the pun 😁) I had put pebbles down as a temporary measure in my front garden in a border between my drive and next door’s drive…and I hadn’t put membrane down as it wasn’t going to be a permanent feature…it’s grown on me though and a few neighbours have commented on it saying how neat and tidy it looks. Seeing the hostas in there gave me inspiration for mine and I’ll keep the pebbles now…I have weeds sprouting through periodically but a squirt of Weedol sorts that out in 2 days. I haven’t seen that product you mention here in the UK though., maybe we have something similar by a different name…can you tell me the main active ingredient please.
Use a geocell grid-keeps rock from sinking, then a limestone base, tamp, then add the rock. Then you have to keep it clear of leaves and soil by blowing after you mow. The fabric is nothing but a headache that traps water which termites and ants love. Keep it treated. So, not even close to less maintenance than mulch.
Couple things as somebody who does this for a living, I would put down ground cover. Especially overtime you will have much less weeds and is an extra bit of insurance that takes very little time to install. Secondly I would really avoid using preen or roundup. Very harsh chemicals that WILL be on your hands, boots, clothes, etc. no matter what you do. Also is dangerous to animals and insects. Personally it’s hard for me to willingly kill weeds with harsh chemicals knowing the repercussions to the ecosystem involved. I would suggest using vinegar, which is a natural weed killer that is much safer. Look for the cleaning version or even a stronger more concentrated version will yield the best results but even just normal vinegar will do the trick. Anyways looks great you do very fine work, and have great attention to detail.
I did a rock project late season last year that consisted of a similar cobble situation. It too was “unwashed”, however when it was delivered the rocks weren’t simply “silty” or dirty. Rather, mixed in with the rocks was a large amount of CLAY. Really disappointing and a royal pain. This stuff wasn’t easy to remove. A rinse from a garden hose was not enough. I tried cleaning the clay of the rocks using a pressure washer but it was a really slow process. I ran out of time when the weather started getting too cold. By then I had cleaned about 15% of the rocks. I kept the cleaned ones in a separate section, but I had to load the rest into the areas I needed them, even with all the clay 🙁 The lesson is if you buy unwashed rock, make sure you clarify just how dirty it will be.
Looks great! I have done smaller projects with river rocks and #57 gravel. I found the weight of the stones make them sink over time into the soil and also soil deposit on top due to runoffs and other reasons. So I had weed growing right on top of the weed barrier. 😆😆😆. You are right about staying on top of that. I hand pick them and try to see that as an exercise.
I did the same but I used the black weed fabric and I get no weeds in that area. For me I like using the fabric. It is a lot cheaper buying rock from a brick and rock yard vs Home Depot. Did you put in a drip watering system? I put one in and it saves money on watering. Are you thinking of staining the fence the same color as the other fence in your yard?
I would not put any decorative rock down. Based on my experience, It looks great initially. But over time, years, it is a maintenance nightmare, because the lawnmower will throw grass clippings into it everytime you mow. So you have use a blower to blow the grass clippings out. Also, grass and weeds will grow in even with fabric barrier. Instead, I would consider putting down composite decking boards, i.e make an on the ground deck, connected together on underneath with cross 2×4’s, treated for ground contact. Make round or square cutout areas for the plants, and mulch in the openings..
Hi! You noted a price of $55 per ton. Was the pile that you showed on camera the one ton? How was it delivered? I was working on a hardscaping project on my website and I was going with stones from the stream but they became hard to get as the sizes were getting larger. Besides, I want some variety. Could you please go over the different sizes of stone? Thanks!
Only criticism I can give (and it is from my own experience doing a similar project) is that you should have used something like river sand or any sand that is larger in size and more angular so that it locks together better and resists being moved somewhat. Playsand is much too small in size and flows way to easy to use as a proper bedding sand for pavers. Now that I’ve said that, it probably won’t matter too much because this paver patio is only for use as a trash can pad.
Can we just give a shout out to your dad for building you this fence and giving it to you? Take him out to lunch! Tell him how much you love and appreciate him. To keep it from getting too sentimental, follow with: Your YouTube website watchers want him to show how he makes things for you. He has talent and a good heart!
As a professional gardener, I have a few words of advice… you’ve planted your hostas, (and on your French drain article, your ornamental grass) too close to your house. Always keep your perennials and shrubs at least 2 feet from any structure so they have room to grow and to keep excess moisture away from the foundation of that structure, especially if it’s a basement.
I cringed when I saw the pavers you have. Those things are horrible. They crack like whoa. My dad thought he’d be clever and put them under the compost bin (one of the rolly ones) and they didn’t last a year. I hope you have better luck with them but be prepared to have to replace them. That rock is stunning though and I love it!
As a amateur landscaper, I was under the impression that we should use a heavy duty weed barrier if we are going to put gravel down . . . I have a 43″ by 105″ area that floods in my front yard and I want to fill it with gravel and maybe a couple stepping stones… Anyone have articles covering this type of project ?
Thanks, Ryan M! This is exactly what I needed. I have an area in the backyard that I’m clearing out mulch to replace with river rocks. The plastic will prevent weeds and keep my rocks and my little dogs clean. I have no plants in that area so not an issue. The cobble rock colors are beautiful! Thank you for showing and appreciating them!
I would have used the fabric weed barrier. Plastic will not allow water to have drainage. And speaking of drainage, you could have incorporated your gutter downspout into the design. But you still can if you decide to. I have alot of river rock on my landscaping and big boulders to add visual interest. Beautifully done❤
The biggest issue I see is the bedding that he had already laid next to the house foundation. It’s not good to add plastic because the soils around and underneath the slab need moisture otherwise depending were you are at can cause foundation issues as far as cracking and shifting. It can get really experto repair FYI.
Plastic is the worst thing you can use as a weed block if you have plants. They might survive but if you use regular weed block fabric the plants will be much better off because water and fertilizer will go through it. Since you are using rock instead of mulch it will keep a lot of the weeds away. If you use mulch on top of a weed barrier it will break down over time and be just like soil and weeds will grow from the top and work through the fabric if you don’t keep up with weeding.
I have used plastic before and sun burning through the rocks made it crumble in less than a year. The weed mesh works pretty good buy weeds still make it through but that is with soil on top. I think black cloth mesh with rocks right on top is your best bet. I have been pulling up planter boxes at my house that has had mesh Pla n’ts and very few weeds and the mesh was installed in 1961 and is still so tough I can hardly cut through it. Plastic would have been decomposed chemicals by now……….I won’t use plastic except in full shade………..good luck doing that again next year or dealing with weeds.