Landscaping with Rocks: from Stonehenge to Stone Walls
Most homeowners will do as much as they can to keep their homes and yards attractive. Some will even go to a great deal of expense to have their yards professionally landscaped. But for many people, a professionally designed landscaped yard full of carefully selected plants would be a budget-breaker. If you’re one of them, you may be wondering if you have any less costly options for creating a beautiful yard.
The short answer is that you certainly do. And one of them is remarkably simple; you can learn the techniques of landscaping with rocks.
Choosing The Right Landscaping Rocks If you're landscaping with rocks, try to use those natural to the area of the country you call home. If you’re a desert dweller, you can try landscaping with rocks to replace the lawn in your yard. You’ll get a maintenance-free surface that never requires a single drop of water, and you can select among several shapes, colors, and textures of rocks. You can even use rocks which echo the golds, reds, and lavenders of a desert sunset. You’ll get a lawn and flower garden substitute all in one when landscaping with rocks, at a fraction of the cost of traditional landscaping!
If you have a home in the high country, nothing will be more appropriate than landscaping with rocks. A single sharply defined boulder of granite will make a great symbol of your lifestyle; it will also your home more like an integral part of the mountains than it already does.
In the northeastern and southeastern U.S., the soil is famous for its high rock content; you can barely turn a shovelful of dirt without uncovering several of them. One of the most memorable features of the New England hillsides is their stone walls, built from the rocks uncovered when the farmers plowed their fields in preparation for planting.
The early New England settlers were landscaping with rocks without even realizing it, but some of their handiwork marks property lines to this day. Some of the finest historical homes in America have entrances and drives graced by stone walls made by hand over three centuries ago.
Building Your Own Rock Wall You can do something similar with your mountain home by landscaping with rocks that you uncover each spring, starting a wall, and letting it get a little higher each year! Your rock wall will tie your home even more closely to its surroundings.
The skill of landscaping with rocks, which has been around for over a thousand years--Stonehenge is really nothing more than landscaping with rocks in its ultimate form--reached American shores with the European immigrants.
No form of landscaping will make as permanent a change in the appearance of your home as landscaping with rocks. As more and more homeowners are looking for ways to distinguish their yards from all the others on their block, they are finding that the natural effect of landscaping with rocks is a perfect answer for both traditional and contemporary homes!