Using Stones in Your Garden
By Pamela & Charles Bowen

Pathways meandering through a garden are pleasing to the eyes as well as the feet. Edging along perennial borders not only reduces maintenance chores but serves as a division between ornamental plants and grass.

Paths and edging can be made with numerous materials. Some require a degree of skill to use successfully. For example, if you're putting in a brick walkway, all the bricks must be level and arranged in an attractive design. If one brick is out of place, people will notice. But stone is easy to use, and requires little skill.

And because rocks are all irregular, there's no right way to position them, so whatever you do will look fine.

We've been using stone in our garden since we began working in it about 10 years ago. It started with some large stepping stones that were already here. We moved them to a better location and made a short pathway through a part of the garden.

Before we did this, we did some research about the proper way to install stepping stones. This involved digging a shallow hole the size of the stone, putting some sand in the bottom, and then positioning the stone so that it nestled in the sand with the top surface even with the surrounding ground. This required a lot of trial and error, and the results were beautiful -- for a couple years. But adding mulch or compost to the surrounding garden eventually raised the ground level slightly, which, combined with the natural settling of the stones, caused them to almost disappear as soil and mulch washed over them during rains.

So for future projects, we decided to take the easy way out. Now, when we make a path of stepping stones, we just place the stones on the ground. If they wobble, then we dig out underneath them where the problem is until they're secure.

The stones we use are about 18 to 24 inches in diameter and an inch or two thick and mostly flat. We place them close together so they're easy to walk on. Although they're an inch or two above the level of the bed, they will settle a little, and will look even better when surrounded by mulch.

When placing stepping stones through a grassy area, experts say place the stones on top of the grass, mark the shape of the stones, then dig out the grass underneath and put the stones in that hole. We didn't have time to do that, so we just lay the stones on top of the grass, with a few inches between stones for the grass to show through. We think the path looks fine.

We use smaller stones as edging material. We have a line of rocks at the edge of the English ivy bed in front of our house. The ivy still grows over (and sometimes under) the rocks, but it's easy to trim back. We also use rocks in the back yard, to help keep the grass from growing into the perennial beds.

So where do you get rocks? The ones beside the road aren't good to use because they tend to fall apart. Farmers usually have a pile of rocks dug up from their fields that they may be willing to part with.

But most of us have to get them from a "stone store." There are several in our area, and they all have a good selection. For paths, look for flat stones roughly the same size. For edging, pick roundish stones 6 to 8 inches in diameter. Stone edging looks good if lots of the stones are different colors. Stone is sold by weight, and a project can be expensive if you need to buy a lot of rocks.

But it's a good investment. After all, they'll last forever.