How to lay colored decorative crushed stone? Gravel garden: a great way to fashionably and simply decorate your garden plot How to properly make a flower bed with colored crushed stone

A flowerbed is one of the most common and popular elements of decorating a plot of land in a country house; it is a small piece of geometrically shaped land on which flowers and plants are planted in a pattern. Currently, there is a huge selection of all kinds of ornamental plants, all the necessary fertilizers and garden tools are available.

A flowerbed can be made from a variety of materials, as well as different shapes.

The term “flowerbed” means a collection of flowering plants, a flower garden. Flowerbed flowers are planted in a bed, the shape of which can be extremely varied: rectangle, oval, circle, triangle, rhombus. can be designed in the form of a ridge, a narrow even strip along the foundation of the house or a twisting snake (arabesque) covering the areas and paths at your dacha.

Some parameters that tell you how to make a flower bed:

harmonious color combination;
the taller the plants, the closer to the center their placement;
sparse planting of flowers in the center, dense planting at the edges;
Avoid very small and complex designs.

Flowerbed layout. Materials and tools

With the help of a properly planned and placed flower bed, you can emphasize the overall individuality of a garden or cottage, identify its main elements and brighten up undesirable aspects.

In order for your flower garden to be bright and harmonious, you need to think in advance about the order of planting.

To create a beautiful flower garden with maximum aesthetic effect, flowers must be arranged according to shades, flowering times and sizes. Therefore, it is necessary to carefully study future flower beds in terms of the illumination of the place, its visibility, compatibility with the relief and background of the area, and the possibility of timely watering.

Most often, fertile soil is poured above ground level: this helps make the arrangement of drainage more convenient. From the point of view of modern landscape design, flower beds are considered not only as flower beds with herbaceous plants, but also as compositions of bushes and trees with a pronounced leaf color or their unusual shape. When preparing to build a flower bed, you first need to decide on its size, shape and visibility. Visibility can be circular or one-sided; shape and size indicators determine the required volumes of nutrient soil. The thickness of the nutrient soil depends on the depth of the plant roots; most often it is 20-30 cm. This amount is enough for the plants to survive for a long time without fertilizing. For trees and large bushes, small pits are made, approximately 60-80 cm deep, and also filled with nutritious soil.

To make flower beds in the country, you will need the following tools:

shovel;
buckets;
pegs;
curbs;
small scoop.

And materials:

planting material (flowers, shrubs, trees, plants);
fertile soil;
sand;
geotextiles;
compost;
complex fertilizers;
border material;
mulching material;
decorative soil (colored chips, pebbles, etc.).

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Flowerbed design

Scheme for designing a flower bed of perennials.

The flowerbed is given character not only by the color pattern and color scheme, the size and shape of the plants also create a volumetric color composition. Therefore, before starting all work, it is necessary to calculate all the nuances on a sheet of paper and draw up a rough plan for the location of certain types and varieties of flowers, a design of the shape, coloring and size, planting points and location of plants. When designing a beautiful flower bed, you need to take into account not only the duration and sequence of flowering, but also the wintering factor. Annual plants are planted annually, perennial varieties can overwinter.

If mixed-type flower beds are planned at the dacha, then shrubs and ornamental trees are first selected, with their help a vertical “frame” is created, which is subsequently filled with flowers and leaves of the desired colors. For this unique frame, it is advisable to use low, decorative, coniferous trees: thuja, pine and fir, juniper and small spruce. This composition will look alive and green even in the absence of flowers, and your dacha will look fresh and well-groomed right up to the snowfall. In spring, these coniferous trees can be supplemented with primrose tulips, hyacinths and crocuses. At the stage of designing a flower bed, the number of required plants and their assortment are determined, planting material is purchased: seedlings, seeds or ZKS, with a closed root system (adult plants in pots).

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Application of mulching materials

To prevent the growth of weeds, the creep of lawn wild grass into the flowerbed, to make the entire composition neat and tidy, you need to correctly calculate the amount of mulching and border material. At the selected location, the projection of the future flower bed is marked with pegs, then the turf is removed and all rhizomatous weeds are removed, the bed is deepened by 10-20 centimeters. If bushes and trees are planned, then pits are dug for them. If you use traditional methods, then separating the fertile soil from the mother soil by drainage in the form of a layer of sand will be considered the correct method. Often this process is neglected, which leads to soaking and acidification of the soil, which causes the plants to experience discomfort, slow down in growth and subsequently die. Non-woven fabric (geotextile) has proven itself very well as a mulching and drainage material; geotextiles come in different colors and densities and are sold under all sorts of commercial names: geospan, lutrasil, agrospan, spanboard and others.

For working with a flower bed, black or brown geotextile material with a density of 60-80 g/sq.m. is ideal. To do this, the flowerbed bed is lined with geotextiles, the edges of the material are secured with a border, curb stone, border tape, varieties of plastic borders or strips of natural flagstone. The powerful roots of shrubs and trees on loamy soils do not need drainage, so over the pits the geotextile is cut crosswise and sprinkled with a 5-centimeter layer of sand.

The use of chernozem brings excellent results, but often the fertile soil is prepared from high peat, one third mixed with sand and added compost, to increase nutritional value. It is not recommended to use peat in its pure form, since after a year and a half it loses its nutritional properties, and when it dries or swells, it breaks the thin plant roots of flowers. As a result of all the above actions, the flowerbed is filled with nutritious soil, it is watered and compacted in such a way that when you press on it with your foot, there is no deep mark left. An important aspect of the fight against weeds that actively grow on nutrient soil can be solved by standard timely weeding; small areas can be protected with geotextiles or other mulching materials.

Currently, many summer residents prefer to arrange flower beds with decorative crushed stone. The reasons for this popularity are quite compelling - it is inexpensive, beautiful and reliable. You can arrange such a flowerbed in a few hours.

Crushed stone itself is obtained by crushing rocks, such as granite or marble. Its fraction is usually small (minimum 5 mm); you can choose crushed stone of any color you like. On sale you can find products of different shapes; options with sharp corners or streamlined shapes are popular.

More recently, crushed stone has been extracted from quarries specifically for decorative purposes, and it is also painted there. The paint used is absolutely safe for both humans and the soil.. It is resistant to various weather conditions, its color does not change either during precipitation or in the scorching sun.

Methods of using crushed stone in decoration are as follows:

decorative crushed stone is often used to decorate flower beds or ponds;
crushed stone is excellent for filling paths and paths;
Often, with the help of decorative crushed stone, beautiful patterns are created in flower beds.

First of all, decorative crushed stone is used to decorate those areas in the garden that are the most problematic, for example, where grass does not grow, where there is swampiness or too much shade. It is not necessary to use only small pebbles - they can be diluted with a couple of large stones.

The bottom of a decorative pond will look beautiful if you decorate it with the same crushed stone painted blue or dark blue. Large boulders can be added here; a pond will look especially attractive if the boulder protrudes from the water. The alpine hill is filled with crushed stone. Here it is a mandatory element for filling the space around the planted plants. In this way, maximum proximity to natural conditions is achieved.

If you plan to create a garden in the Japanese style, then you cannot do without stone decorations. Stone is an integral part of Japanese design. This garden is also called the “garden of emptiness”; it is an area completely paved with stone. The ground is first sprinkled with small crushed stones, waves are created from larger ones, large stones and boulders are placed in random order, symbolizing islands and mountains. Such a garden also needs care; a special rake will help here. It is with them that they create a water effect on the stones, and circles are mainly drawn around large boulders. In this simple way you can create the effect of a stone thrown into water.

How to fill around plants?

Filling with decorative crushed stone is very simple; the procedure will be as follows:

1 First you need to prepare the soil, remove the top layer of soil (no more than 10 cm).
2 The next step is to lay the curbs that will delimit the territory. You can use borders made from absolutely any material.
3 Then you need to pour sand into the prepared hole (no more than 5 cm). The sand itself is covered with a material that will simultaneously allow water to pass through and prevent the sand and crushed stone from mixing. For example, you can use plastic film with holes pre-drilled in it.
4 The final stage will be laying decorative crushed stone. If you plan to decorate flower beds and create patterns, then you can pour no more than 2 cm of crushed stone. If you need to fill the paths, then 5 cm of crushed stone is enough. For work, it is better to take 2 types of crushed stone: small ones should be poured onto large ones so as to eliminate unnecessary gaps between the stones.

How to paint crushed stone yourself?

You can paint crushed stone yourself, choosing exactly the color that is needed in a particular case. Acrylic and alkyd paints are suitable for creativity; you can take colored aerosol enamel in a can. Each pebble (pre-washed) must be painted on one side first, then wait for the paint to dry, and then paint the other side. Typically, paint dries quickly, so the whole process won't take much time. The main thing is not to try to apply a thick layer of paint at once - it is best to make a thin layer and see how it will look after drying.

If the result is not too bright, then it will be possible to paint the stones again.

The above method is only suitable if you only need to paint a small number of stones. When it comes to large volumes, this method disappears immediately. To paint a large amount of pebbles, you need to put them in a container and pour paint into it. The crushed stone must be mixed thoroughly so that every pebble is painted. Some people use a concrete mixer for this purpose.

How to decorate a lawn with gravel?

If you only have crushed stone, but you need streamlined pebbles to decorate your flowerbed, then you can easily get out of this situation. To do this you will need any large container, cement and paint. Creating a streamlined shape will be achieved during painting. The creative process is carried out in the following sequence:

1 First, you need to pour 1/3 of the existing crushed stone into the container, and you also need to pour paint into it. Everything must be mixed thoroughly.
2 After everything is mixed, water is added to the crushed stone (2 times more than paint).
3 Cement is poured out (the quantity can be adjusted independently), and everything is mixed. At the end, the remaining crushed stone is poured in, after which everything is mixed again.

Those stones that are completely painted with cement must be removed and placed on a grid to dry. You can also use regular polyethylene for this. After the stones have completely dried, you can evaluate the result: the crushed stone has acquired a more streamlined and smooth shape and has been properly painted.

You can decorate any flower bed, garden path, or shaded area near the entrance with such crushed stone.

A new trend in landscape design is decorative backfill. If you see such an interesting design solution, you will definitely want to do something similar in your garden.

Many companies offer this service. But this does not mean that you cannot make decorative filling yourself. And we, in turn, will try to reveal the most pressing issues in this topic.

Decorative filling - a new trend in landscape design

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You've certainly seen the perfect lawn in a movie, on an alley, or perhaps on your neighbor's lawn. Those who have ever tried to grow a green area on their site will no doubt say that it is a huge amount of work. The lawn requires careful planting, care, fertilization, and watering. However, only inexperienced gardeners think this way; professionals have long known about the innovative product - liquid lawn AquaGrazz.

Decorative filling is a material that has a loose structure and is used for mulching the soil. As for the sizes, fractions and other physical properties of the material, it all depends on your desire. The most commonly used are:

stone chips (in particular, marble and granite),
pebbles (large and small),
sand,
shells,
glass and plastic “balls”,
bark, chopped wood, etc.

The purpose of decorative filling can be very different: from mulching the soil around trees to decorating garden paths or flower beds (rose gardens, rock gardens). Decorative backfill can be used both to create a pond and a “dry landscape” (Japanese-style design). With its help you can even “draw” a picture. One “but” - this will require some perseverance and a sense of beauty from you.

Decorative filling is useful not only for its aesthetic, but also for its practical properties. Thanks to it, the frequency of weeding flower beds or garden paths will be reduced. As for cultivated plants, they receive undoubted benefits from decorative filling, especially in hot summers, because it reduces the level of evaporation of moisture from the ground. In addition, thanks to backfilling, the amplitude of daily soil surface temperature fluctuations decreases. Consequently, energy expenditure by plants to overcome stress associated with temperature fluctuations is reduced. This means that the plant blooms better and brighter or performs other decorative functions.

Types of decorative filling. Their pros and cons

Depending on the origin of materials used for filling, it is divided into two types:

organic,
inorganic.

Each fill has its own advantages and disadvantages, so when choosing, you need to carefully weigh and think through everything.

Organic filling

The most popular organic decorative fills include pine bark and cedar husks. Of course, it is almost impossible to create filling material yourself. This requires special machines and units. But buying it and using it in the landscape design of your dacha will not be difficult.

The main advantages of such materials are:

As for the disadvantages of this type of decorative filling, they are:

fragility. The lower balls of the fill (if they are adjacent directly to the ground and are not separated from it by film or other waterproofing material) are prone to rotting, thereby acidifying the soil. Therefore, you need to carefully monitor the condition of such filling to prevent it from completely rotting.
ease. Well-dried wood is easily transported by the wind. Therefore, it is useful to decorate the edges of the area with decorative backfilling with stones or other material that will hold it back in windy weather.

The combination of these properties means that organic decorative fill needs to be added from time to time. Thus, its constant quantity and quality are maintained.

Inorganic fill

Inorganic decorative fill is more often used in landscape design. As is already clear from the name, these are materials of inorganic origin. They, in turn, are divided into

Natural are materials obtained by humans from the environment without chemical processing. These include:

crushed stone is a material obtained by mechanically crushing stone. For this, different rocks are used - marble, granite, slate, quartzite. Thanks to this, crushed stone has a different structure and color range, which is convenient when creating multi-colored decorative filling;
sand is a material characterized by a fine fraction. Both natural washed river or sea sand and those obtained by grinding marble, granite, expanded clay, shells, etc. are used;
decorative gravel - small stones of various shapes, which are used mainly to design central paths (for example, the entrance to a summer cottage);
pebbles - round, smooth small pebbles. They are of river or sea origin. It is sea pebbles that are especially valued. It can be used both on its own and in combination with artificial materials.

The advantages of these materials are their durability, as well as the preservation of their decorative appearance and properties for quite a long time.

In addition, they require less maintenance than organic fill: weeds are pulled out more easily, and the material itself does not rot.

The main disadvantage is the difficulty in autumn cleaning. After all, if you have a crushed stone path running under bushes with small leaves, then over time a lot of leaves will be poured there.

Artificial decorative inorganic filling is a variety of colored and plastic “pebbles”. People get them thanks to the chemical industry. This type of backfill comes in all the colors of the rainbow, making it especially useful for creating contrasting landscapes. Artificial filling also needs to be poured onto some kind of base - film, geotextile or something similar. This will make caring for her easier.

The pros and cons of artificial fill are similar to those of natural fill. It should only be added that it costs a little more. But this is covered by decorative properties.

Laying decorative backfill and rules for caring for it

Before filling the area with fill, you need to create a plan for its placement. After all, planning will help determine exactly how much material you need. For example: 1 m2 of area will require about 25 kg of wood, while gravel will require more than 50 kg. The reason is the different fractionalization and structural features of the materials.

On the plan you also need to mark out different types of fill, colors, boundaries of its location and other little things.

After all, you can’t keep everything in your memory, and, as they say, you can’t cut out what’s written with a pen with an axe.

If you use inorganic fill, you need to select a material for it. Geotextiles are best suited. It has all the necessary properties that help preserve the decorative properties of the fill, as well as its quality. Ordinary film is also suitable for use. You just need to choose one with a thickness of at least 0.7 cm. After purchase, the film must be perforated. Excess water will drain through the resulting holes. This will ensure a longer life for your fill. As for organic fill, it does not require any additional support. This filling itself acts as a fertilizer for plants after rotting.

Creation of markings on the site. It will help you make the filling as perfect as possible;
Clearing the area of debris and weeds;
Removing turf from the area of future dumping;
Laying a lining under the fill (if inorganic is used);
If planting is planned together with the backfill, at this stage you need to make the necessary holes in the backing and plant the plants in them.
Cover the surface of the lining with a layer of 5 to 10 cm.

As for the care of the backfill, it includes the following procedures:

Decorative backfill is an innovative but very interesting solution in landscape design. It allows you to “revive” the territory of the site even in cloudy autumn and early spring.

A video about creating decorative fill will help you become better acquainted with its principles and methods of creation.

If there is a garden, then there is a place in it for a flower bed, a constant companion of the landscape. But there is not always time to keep the flower garden in a tidy condition, since it requires constant attention. There is a special type of flower bed, or rather, a composition consisting of decorative vegetation and gravel backfill, which is less difficult to care for.

A small piece of land in which the space between plantings is covered with gravel can be considered a gravel flower bed. Plants for it are selected depending on the landscape of the garden, but usually they are decorative deciduous or evergreen perennials. Annual herbaceous plants are not used for such purposes at all or only in rare cases, since they quickly lose their decorative value.

As a variation of the flower-gravel composition, you can use flowers in flowerpots. They are dug into the soil and sprinkled with fine crushed stone, or simply installed on a gravel backfill. The advantage of this type of flower garden is its mobility, since at any time you can change the location of the flowerpots and introduce something new into the landscape.

Advantages of a flower garden on gravel

Small stones cover the soil in a dense layer, preventing sunlight from entering. Thanks to this, weed seeds do not germinate, and the flowerbed needs weeding less often. Also, under the layer of stones, moisture is retained longer, which reduces the number of waterings. In addition, this type of flower bed has several other advantages.

Advantages of gravel and plant composition:

The light background created by the gravel emphasizes the freshness of the greenery;
The garden always looks well-groomed;
Under a layer of stones you can hide the irrigation system;
Gravel protects the soil from overheating;
Gravel works as drainage, so water does not accumulate on the soil after rain or watering.

A gravel flower bed is especially relevant in a garden where there is not enough space to create a large flower garden. The simplest vegetation looks exotic and unusual in such a presentation.

How to make a flower garden with gravel

There are several ways to create a composition on a stone bed. The simplest one boils down to the fact that the soil around the plants already in the garden is well weeded and a layer of gravel is poured. The disadvantage of this method is that weeds will grow through the stones and will have to be pulled out by hand.

It is more rational to make a gravel bed using geotextiles, which allow moisture to pass through to the soil, but does not allow weeds to germinate. This is done as follows:

The plot of land allocated for the flowerbed is cleared of weeds, dug up and leveled;
A geotextile fabric is spread on the soil;
Holes are cut in places where plants are planted, planting holes are dug and fertile soil is added (Figure 1);
Prepared seedlings are planted in the holes and watered;
Geotextiles are covered with a layer of gravel up to 5 cm high (Figure 2).

What plants to plant in a gravel bed

Any plant looks great against the backdrop of light gravel, but there are some that are especially beautiful in its community. These are decorative deciduous trees with an elegant shape of the trunk and leaves, as well as conifers. Among them are cypress, yucca, yew, Rogers, and boxwood. No less excellent on gravel are shrubs with rich green, variegated and variegated foliage: Thunberg barberry, holly mahonia, Fortune's euonymus, variegated hydrangea, Japanese spirea and others.

There are many plants that can be planted in a flower-gravel composition, so it is easier to be guided by what does not need to be planted: fast-growing plantings that sprout shoots, as well as representatives of the flora that need frequent replanting.

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Now we will not consider the example of creating huge dry streams on the site. There are a lot of nuances there and, as a rule, a large amount of work is carried out to excavate soil and then form a channel, using all the variety of natural stones and plants. Maybe later in a separate article I will cover this topic.

In the meantime, let's consider the case when we need to make a small stream somewhere in the corner of our small garden.

First of all take a good look at the terrain the area where you would like to make a stream. Are there any interesting differences there? If yes, very good. Hence use them. You can even try pouring water from a hose and see where the water runs. And then repeat its direction. This way the stream can look as natural as possible.

Once you have decided on the direction of the riverbed, remove a small layer of soil along the entire length. Literally the top is 3 - 4 cm.

—Then you can make a small sand cushion. Although this step is not required, I try not to skip it.

— Lay insulating material. It will inhibit the growth of weeds. Geotextiles with a density of 100 or more are quite suitable. It is better to secure it with something along the edges. For example, metal brackets that can be made from old electrodes.

Finally, lay your baby down. In some places of the riverbed you can place some stones bigger. It will look more interesting this way.

Since the stream is still a decorative element, a large layer is not needed. Crushed stone of the 5/10 mm fraction is laid 2 - 3 cm thick without gaps. The larger fraction 5/20 mm is laid 3 - 4 cm thick.

By the way, when you lay down the decorative chips, add two additional colors to the main color. For example, the main color is blue, then sprinkle some blue and white on top. This will give you an interesting visual effect!