Introduction

If you're looking for a trouble-free landscaping option, a gravel garden might be in your future. Once established, they're a lot less hassle than lawns and standard landscaping beds, because they need minimal weeding or irrigation. And once they fill in with a bounty of native plants, they'll provide all the ecological benefits of a traditional flower garden.

Gravel gardens are a popular choice in drought-prone areas, and also good for mitigating flooding from heavy rains. Plus, they're a fun way to exercise your artistic expression, with accents like small boulders, benches and bird baths.

When choosing plants for your gravel garden, opt for ones with deep root systems so they can pull moisture from the soil. Drought-tolerant perennial grasses and evergreens are good picks, as are bulbs and even herbs.

Plants in four-inch pots are ideal, because their root balls are just large enough to penetrate the gravel. However, due to our particularly cold and dry climate, we opted for larger plants that have a better chance of surviving the winter.

We bought the gravel from a stone/quarry retailer, filled a heavy-duty trash can halfway up via shovel, and team-carried it home. But if you're creating a larger garden, you may need a delivery truck or rent a trailer to carry the tonnage you need.

We built our gravel garden approximately six feet by two feet, but yours can be larger or smaller, whatever size you want it to be.

Tools Required

Materials Required

• 4 cubic feet of quartzite pea gravel (larger gravel will work too)
• 4 wood or metal stakes
• Border edging (wood or bricks or stones)
• Compost or mulched leaves or other topsoil amendment
• Landscape fabric (optional)
• Plants