Gravel gardens represent a great alternative to your standard garden if you’re looking for some beautiful plants to enliven your yard while having a lower maintenance option.
Gravel gardens are easy to accommodate as long as you’re comfortable with some basic rules and select the right plants.
However, learning how to properly lay gravel on soil is an important part of gravel gardening because if you don’t get this part right, the rest of the process won’t go as easily.
Laying gravel on soil isn’t hard because it basically requires clearing out your garden space, turning over the soil to aerate it, adding coarse sand if necessary, digging an outer border, and putting down weed membrane over the area. These just a couple of other tasks and you’ll have a lovely gravel garden in the end.
Fortunately, we created a step-by-step guide to help even beginning growers get started with their own gravel garden.
Step 1: Know What Types of Plants to Buy
While not every plant works well with gravel gardens, below some options that do.
- Iris.
- Rock Roses.
- Daisies.
- Thyme.
- Aloe.
- Lilies.
- Cacti.
- Lavender.
- Yucca.
- Feather Grass.
If you dislike any of this species feel free to ask any associates at your local gardening center or nursery and they should be able to recommend you other plant varietals that will work as well.
Step 2: Get All of the Vegetation Removed and Prepare the Ground
To begin your gravel garden, you will need to clear out some area for your garden to go.
Make sure you clear out everything, including weeds, plants and even the grass.
Go ahead and hold on to those plants that you want to replant in the garden after you are done.
When you have completed this task, turn over the ground a few times to aerate the top layer of the soil.
Then rake the ground well so that any lumps are broken down and add either some fertilizer, manure or compost on top the soil.
Consider this: If the area is one that you do not think drains well, you can add a little coarse sand as well.
Step 3: Make Sure to Dig an Outside Border
Always dig an external edge when building a gravel garden.
Your goal is to make it a few inches deep and approximately four inches wide. This is done to separate the work from the patio, grass, or even your flower beds.
Once you have completed this step, just lay a weed membrane over the entire area and secure it down using either large rocks and stones or a weight of some kind.
If your gravel garden will be a self-seeding gravel garden you can skip this step.
Also, never use plastic instead of the weed membrane, as it will simply not work as well.
Step 4: Choosing Your Gravel
Before learning how to correctly lay your gravel you’ll need to know what kind, and how much to buy.
First off however, you need to measure before you know how much gravel to buy.
As a rule of thumb, an area, 10 square feet in size, and two inches deep will use approximately 90 pounds of one-inch gravel.
If your garden is not a standard size and odd shape, just measure the width and length around the area.
As far as the type of gravel used, I personally would not opt for anything too small as it will always escape the border area.
Graval such as colored slate chippings or crushed stone do well in gardens, but you may want to be careful with crushed stone as it sometimes has sharp edges that may hurt pets or children who occasionally roam bare-footed.
Your Choice: You may also want to pick dark color gravel just because the light color gravel can easily fade and look dull over time.
Step 5: Spreading the Gravel
At this stage, you will want to finish off your borders before moving on to your gravel.
At this step, you have two things you can do.
- To begin, you can add some kind of edge, such as a metal strip and bury it into the borders, so that the gravel does not right up and possibly roll out of the area. This type of edge also makes it easier to drain away any excess water from the area. This will always help if your soil has any type of clay locations.
- Your second option is to put boulders or large pebbles located around the area and use them as your border. Now, you’ll be able to place the plants you would like planted within their placement.
You may want to position all of your pots where you’d like them to go, then step back and see if you like what you created.
When you are satisfied, cut “X’s” (never cut holes) in the sheets of the membrane, and dig holes to plant your pots.
Add a little compost just to get things started, and make sure that the edges of the membrane are tucked under the plants well, then water.
As you are laying your pots out, be sure to allow enough room in between the plants to give them room to grow.
Now you’re ready to spread the gravel.
As you are doing this:
- You also want to position any focal points, like rocks or stone benches, where you want them to be.
- Then even out the gravel over the membrane, around your focal points and plants.
- As you are working next to the edges, be sure to keep some extra gravel mulch to the side to use to fill in holes in your garden later on.
- Then use a rake to smooth down the garden to remove any high or low spots. Again, be careful when raking the gravel because you don’t want to hurt any of the shrubs or flowers that you just planted.
Step 6: Maintaining Your Gravel Garden
When it comes to gravel gardens, you’ll find that there will be very little for you to do in the future, especially GPS the garden becomes established.
All you will normally have to do is occasionally do a few things to keep your gravel tidy and to manage the plants themselves.
Aside from that, gravel gardens require little to nothing in the way of maintenance for years and years to come.
Nonetheless, here are a few things to be conscious of:
- To remove mess such as dead leaves or flowers or even weeds, either use a plastic rake, a leaf blower, or even a stiff bristled paint brush. Weeds should be pulled by hand, and you will add a little gravel every now and then.
- Tend to your plants as you would in a traditional garden. If they need deadheading, pruning, or a little care- do so when appropriate.
- Remember you my not need to water your plants very much, but you might need to fertilize them from time to time to keep them healthy and energetic.
- If you go with a self-seeding garden, which is a garden without a weed membrane, it will require more weeding on a more regular basis and will take a little more work than a normal gravel garden.
And remember that you can always add other plants later if you want.
In addition to the above plants, gravel gardens will work with many different shrubs, succulents, herbs, and grasses.
Of course, you’ll need to choose carefully, but as you realize a plant performs well in a gravel garden, just place it in the same way as the other plants!
Keep in mind that naturally, the best results are with drought-resistant plants!
In Summary
Simply following some simple rules, and ensuring you are preparing the site correctly will prevent needless problems into the future.
You do not want to be visiting the site again with a need to do the work again in a couple of months.