Stone Craze
I love stones. In fact, my youngest sister says I am stone-crazy. She refers both to my passion for stones in my garden as well as my desire to visit historic places, which often are of stone. Over the years, I’ve used a lot of stones in the garden. Here, I started with large and small stones to line the pond and the creek. Lately, I have laid stone paths and paved areas to prevent the growth of weed.
Amateur Stone Layer
I’m not a professional stone layer, and maybe my work won’t pass a craftmanship test, but it works, and we like the look of it. I have some more areas I want to pave with stone, but first, I have to get hold of more stones.
Take a look at some of my work and let me know what you think.
Stone on a Budget
Many types of stones can be used in the garden. Manufactured stones and natural stones are two main groups. I like both, but having a large garden and not so much money, I use a lot of natural stone. If I can get manufactured stone cheaply, I’ll use that too, and not having a lot of both, I try to combine. Here, in Sweden, I often search at hemnet.se to find people who give away or sell used stones.
Natural stones can be bought like manufactured stones, but if you have access to nature, you can find stones almost everywhere. Of course, if you don’t own the land yourself, make sure the owner let you collect stones on his property. We have been around our property, as well as the properties of some neighbours, scavenging for stones in different sizes.
Many people want to get rid of concrete slabs from the 70-ies and give them away for free or very cheaply. When you turn them upside down, they lose that 70-ies look. I have combined different stones in ways that I think look pleasing.
My Stone Projects
We started laying the 50×50 cm concrete slabs to make a parking lot for our car near the house. Then, we used a lot of natural stones to surround the pond and the artificial creek. Furthermore, I’ve created a path along the pond with more slabs, as well as some natural stones, to make the path wider.
Last year, I created a solid floor for the water fountain outside the orangery and this year, I’ve created a similar paved space in a seating area under an apple tree. Finally, my last stone project so far, has been creating steps in the walkway leading up the rock at the back of our house.
I have also started to line the flower beds that borders to the lawn with stones. The reason being to save us the work of trimming the edges. I’ve laid the sones so our robot lawn mower can go over the stones and cut the grass without getting into the flower beds themselves. So far that seems to work.
My two stone projects this year have been to create a stone paved seating area and a path with steps. Previously, we just covered the areas with sand, but that proved to be very beneficial for weed. So, with a hope of less weed, I’ve laid stones on top. I have no doubt weed will appear, but hopefully, the stones will halt their appearance somewhat.
Hard Work
Working with stones are back-breaking work and after a few days work I feelmy body feels 20 years older. But, luckily, one or two good nights sleep helps. There’s still stones to be laid in our garden.
Want to see more?
Take a look at a garden walk 3 years ago or a description of our flower borders. I have to admit that they have changed a lot over time, and the long flower border is due for a change this year.
