Landscaping with rocks can bring home and hobby together by giving rock collectors a way to showcase their favorite specimens while adding practical, natural elements to outdoor spaces. From pathways and retaining walls to garden accents and water features, rocks can provide structure, texture and year-round interest.
Many collectors have larger stones, field finds or specimen pieces that can serve a purpose beyond a display shelf. The key is to inventory what you have, consider the characteristics of each rock and decide how it can best be incorporated into your landscaping with stones.
Landscaping with Rocks: Key Takeaways
- Landscaping with rocks adds durable, low-maintenance elements to outdoor spaces.
- Large stones can serve practical purposes, including retaining walls, drainage, erosion control and pathways.
- Decorative rocks can create focal points, borders, water features and unique garden designs.
- Rock collectors can incorporate larger specimens and field finds into their landscapes.
- Choosing locally sourced or reclaimed stone can help reduce the environmental impact of landscaping projects.
Using Rocks for Practical Landscaping Features
Stone is valued for its year-round interest and unique appearance. It’s also low to no maintenance. It can withstand weather and heavy use, essentially indefinitely, depending on the material chosen.
Rocks and stones can be used for patios, walls, stairs or even be incorporated into exterior lighting. Stone is also used extensively for drainage and to protect against erosion.
Rock Walls, Steps and Outdoor Structures
Walls are an important part of the landscape to contend with differing elevations and serve as a barrier to hold the earth in place. Stone walls may be formal or informal and can serve to mark property boundaries or to protect an area such as a garden or a swimming pool.
Stone steps often accompany a rock wall, but not always. They are frequently used for their durability, as well as their appearance. They can be uniform and clean-looking, or erratic and uneven.
Stone walls and stairs often serve double duty as exterior seating. Stone pillars may flank either stairs or walls and sometimes incorporate landscape lighting elements.
Using Rocks for Drainage, Erosion Control and Plant Protection
Stone is the building material of choice for wet or poorly drained areas. Water drains more quickly through small rocks than clay or muck soils. Gardens can be built on top of a bed of gravel to aid in drainage. For areas that lose soil during rain or weather events, stone serves as a solid barrier to prevent or reduce such losses.
In their role as a protector, rocks also shield plants from many types of stress. Plants growing directly behind or next to rocks are less likely to be trampled. Rocks provide shade in the summertime and absorb some of the heat that would have otherwise gone into the soil to the plant’s root zone. In colder months, stone helps to insulate and shield plants from the worst of winter’s freezing winds.
Decorative Landscaping With Rocks
Some of the most beautiful elements of the landscape are constructed of stone. Stone is an amazing medium for statement pieces and works of art. Just like lapidary artists with jewelry, skilled artisans can utilize stone to create a focal point, an impact, a separation or an aesthetic element to a water or fire feature.
Stone elements can also draw your eye away from less attractive or utilitarian features in the landscape such as drainage elements or buildings. Stone or rocks of varying sizes can be combined to create contrast. They can be the backdrop for living elements such as flowers or uniquely shaped trees. They can be used to create an entire garden or as an accent anchor or as a centerpiece.
Rock Borders, Water Features and Garden Accents
Separation in the yard or garden can be achieved with many materials, both natural and synthetic. None, however, have quite the impact of stone. Stone can be used to define boundaries of gardens, properties or just to delineate one type of land use from another.
Rocks can also be the basis of landscape features containing other elements such as water or fire. Entire features can be cleverly built out of or carved from stone. A recess in a large rock can be carved out to create a fire pit for outdoor ambiance and cooking. Elaborate waterfalls can be built with well-sited and selected boulders and large rocks. Ponds can be lined, encircled with, or be made entirely from rock. On a smaller scale, birdbaths, footpaths, or cooling stations for wandering animals can be carved out of the right stone and contribute to the aesthetics of a landscape.
Creating a Focal Point With Large Landscape Rocks
Even without extensive skills in sculpting or masonry, stone can be a statement unto itself. The mere placement of a large boulder in the landscape can go a long way to adding dimension and depth to an otherwise ordinary yard. While it can be costly to add large, statement-type boulders or to convert large portions of the landscape to stone or rock, there are some more cost-effective ways to incorporate stone into your landscape.
Where to Find Rocks for Landscaping
If stones are not native to your home landscape and are not easily dug, then there are other options. Leftovers from construction sites are often locations to obtain free materials with permission from the site owner. Materials that people would have to pay to discard are often gladly given away for free. Permission can sometimes be obtained from public lands to take some rock out so long as it is not serving another deliberate or ecological function. Failing the free options, rock and stone are available in all shapes, sizes and prices at many garden and landscape supply stores.
Environmental Considerations When Landscaping With Rocks
You have decided that your outdoor living space needs more natural elements and stone is the perfect addition. It comes from nature, so there must be very little environmental impact in using it, right? Well, not exactly. Stone for landscape use is either removed from natural settings like riverbeds, dug or quarried. Each harvesting and transportation method utilizes fossil fuels. The closer from the point of origin to its destination, the lower the carbon footprint to getting it there.
Quarrying operations can damage the environment. Many responsible companies do have reclamation plans in place for when an area has been tapped out. It is important to work with a company that has such a plan in place. It’s also good to work with a company that doesn’t quarry stone or rock that is in short supply or that is ecologically sensitive.
The process of extracting or processing stone for use in decoration or industry creates other problems as well. Besides erosion and fossil fuel usage, these processes create noise pollution and often generate dust that travels far from its point of origin. This doesn’t mean that stone should be ruled out as a function of the landscape.
Because stone does not decompose, there are often many opportunities to reuse stone that has already been quarried or used for other purposes. There are also landscape companies that take their role very seriously and work to offset any disturbances they cause by improving the environment in other ways, such as planting more trees or even just by using more environmentally friendly extraction methods to obtain the stone.
Landscaping Inspiration From Famous Stone Features
Mankind has been altering and shaping stone for a variety of purposes since the first primitive hand tools were fashioned. There are thousands of examples all over the world. Here is a list of some of the better-known examples.
NORTH AMERICA
Cairns – Cairns can be found all over North America but most often near coasts. They are simply stones piled atop one another but can be made up of many thousands. Examples date back many hundreds of years.
Public gardens – We are fortunate to have many examples of 19th and 20th-century landscape architecture to visit. In some cases, renowned landscape architects designed magnificent stone structures for their wealthy clients and are now available for all to see. One such example is the grand stone staircase at Naumkeag in Massachusetts designed by Fletcher Steele.
Monuments – Whether carved in place such as Mount Rushmore or the Crazy Horse monuments in South Dakota or sited at a specific spot such as the MLK Jr. memorial in Washington D.C., stone is the perfect material to honor our history.
Public Art Displays – These come in all sizes and can be found in almost every town, city or county. They can be as simple as a painted rock in a town square or an array such as America’s Stonehenge in Georgia.
AROUND THE WORLD
Ancient Stone Monuments – Historic peoples have baffled generations with their ingenuity in moving stones weighing many tons without the aid of machinery. Sites like Stonehenge, Easter Island, or the Great Pyramids of Giza still elicit awe for their sheer scale.
Public Gardens – The world abounds in fine examples of masonry and ornate stonework in public gardens such as those found in Japan and England.
Great Wall of China – This gargantuan feat of engineering needs no introduction. Once erroneously thought to be the only manmade structure to be seen from space (it’s not), this amazing landmark was started over 2200 years ago!
Frequently Asked Questions About Landscaping with Rocks
What are the benefits of landscaping with rocks?
Landscaping with rocks provides year-round interest while requiring little maintenance. Rocks can help with drainage, erosion control, pathways, borders and decorative features.
What types of rocks are best for landscaping?
The best landscaping rocks depend on the project. Gravel works well for drainage and pathways, while larger boulders and decorative stones can create focal points or structural features.
Can rock collectors use their specimens in landscaping?
Yes. Larger specimens, field finds and interesting stones can become unique landscape features when placed thoughtfully in gardens, pathways or outdoor displays.
Are rocks environmentally friendly for landscaping?
Rocks are durable and do not need replacement often, but extraction and transportation can have environmental impacts. Using locally sourced, reclaimed or recycled stone can reduce those impacts.
Whether you use rocks to create a functional retaining wall, improve drainage or simply highlight a favorite specimen from your collection, stone brings a lasting connection between the natural world and your outdoor space. With thoughtful placement and responsible sourcing, landscaping with rocks can turn ordinary areas into landscapes with character, history and geological interest.
This story about landscaping with rocks previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by Chris Bond.
