Backyard edging ideas with pebbles and rocks. They're not just for creating beautiful paths throughout your garden. Whether you’re trying out flagstones, river rocks, or decorative pebbles, you can use rocks to add flair to any feature in your landscaped backyard. Using rocks to spice up your garden is called hardscaping, and here are four tips you can use to add a unique accent to one or more of your garden features:
- Edging Your Garden With Pebbles
Edging around your garden helps to keep weeds away from your precious flowers and vegetables, and this simple hardscaping hack also looks beautiful when it’s done with skill. Dig a shallow trench around the edge of your garden. Cut and measure a length of landscaping fabric, and carefully align the fabric in the trench. Then, pour pebbles into the trench.
You can then arrange the pebbles to be flat or hilly based on your preferences. For this gardening hack, you can use either polished on unpolished pebbles, and a perfectly edged garden looks great next to a tasteful wood outdoor sectional or wicker patio furniture.
- Use Rocks to Edge Around Trees
If you have trees in your lawn, another backyard edging idea is to edge the trees with medium-sized rocks serves two purposes. First, it protects your trees and their bark beds from lawnmowers and other landscaping equipment, and carefully selected rocks also take your decorative tree’s aesthetics to a whole new level.
For this project, you’ll only need some relatively hefty rocks. River rocks work well, and you can also use angular granite or even flagstones. Move your rocks over to the tree bed in a wheelbarrow, and then arrange them around the base of the bark bed. Some hardscaping enthusiasts search for the most uniform look possible while others like to mix and match rocks of different sizes for an avant-garde look.
- Edge Around Your Porch with a Gravel Moat
Porches and decks that lead right up to the edge of your lawn are all the rage, but you’ll need something to protect your fancy porch from dirt and grass. If you have a porch that’s low to the ground, you’ll love this simple hardscaping hack:
Dig a moat all along the edge of your porch. Then, cut landscaping fabric to fit into your moat. If your porch is relatively long, you might want to cut multiple lengths of fabric and make them overlap. Then, pour pebbles into the moat over the landscaping fabric. Polished pebbles look great in this setting, but small river rocks would also do nicely.
Smooth the pebbles out so that they’re even all along the length of the moat. Not only does a gravel moat accentuate your outdoor dining set, but it will also defend your deck from rot for years to come.
4. Edge Your Gravel Path with Big Rocks
Nothing looks better in a well-tended garden than a raked gravel path. However, a simple path cut through the grass looks somewhat lonely without anything to separate it from the rest of your garden.
There’s a simple hardscaping and backyard edging idea that you can use to differentiate your path from its surroundings. Simply line both edges of your gravel path with large rocks. Some hardscapers like to use angular rocks for this project, but others prefer polished river rocks.
No matter how many beautiful plants and trees you have in your backyard, it will always seem like something’s missing unless you maximize your hardscaping potential. Remember that there are just as many pebble and rock edging ideas as you can come up with, so don’t be afraid to experiment as you search for a hardscaping solution that works for you.