Laying garden gravel/chippies??

Hi All,

I'm completely new to gardening (other than cutting grass and pulling weeds!!!) and I'm looking into laying garden gravel in part of the garden of our recently built house. The garden is pretty big and we have half of it as grass and the other half is where a lot of the excavations were done for sewage, gas, water etc and is currently....well a bit of a mess really. I thought about just sewing grass seed but the soil is very rocky and it would take an age to clear the stones so I (my wife really!!) wanted to make part of it a veggie patch and the rest gravel. What I'm looking for is advice on how best to do this. What I plan to do is hire a mini digger to level the ground then lay weed control fabric with the decorative gravel on top. It all sounds very simple, but like I said in my first sentence, I'm very new to gardening and I'm not sure if it is indeed as simple as that. If someone with a bit of knowledge in this area could shed some light on the pros and cons of this type of garden and let me in on any trade secrets it would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Bob86.

 

Hi JWK and thanks.

The size of the area I am planning to lay garden gravel would be roughly 40ft by 30ft, so quite large. I think I'd like to have some plants and small bushes along with some garden furniture in this area, possibly a raised flower bed too. Gravel doesn't sound great does it!! It would be a decorative type gravel or chippies that we would be looking to put down though, so I think it would look ok. My worry is that weeds would be a problem. How effective is the weed control fabric at preventing weeds from emerging?

 

I would be wary about anything too decorative. I laid a gravel area in my garden and I used ordinary 20 mil gravel from a builder's merchant's yard. And I am very pleased I did.

My feeling with is that coloured gravel is like a plain colour carpet. Everything shows up. Admittedly my gravel is very close to my borders. The net result is that there are odd spillages of soil or compost by me or the birds or some leaves etc. I feel they would all show up on a coloured gravel. I used ordinary gravel that has a mottled appearance and stuff doesn't show up very much.

I used very cheap fabric, but once under the gravel there is no reason for it to rot or tear as its nylon. So it will last if left undisturbed. But you will slowly get a build up soil in the gravel. The wind will blow it there and that means that you will get some weeds growing above the fabric.

 

Somewhat late to this thread, but if the soil is very poor then you might consider a wildflower meadow type of planting. For the reason that, when grass growth is less vigorous due to low fertility soil, a wider range of grassland flowers will be able to do well (since most species don't require high nutrient levels, and do better in poor soil). Once established, it's also quite low maintenance since you only need to mow it a couple of times a year, in late summer and perhaps again in the late winter. Any 'weeds' would just blend in with the grass/flowers, whereas with gravel even a few stray plants would be instantly noticeable (plus, plain gravel is pretty dull to look at).

You wouldn't need to dig over the soil much (or at all), so long as you clear the stones off the surface and rake it over before sowing.

Also, if the soil's poor, it might well take you a lot of time/effort to improve it enough for vegetables - these might do better using an area of the existing lawn, if the soil there hasn't been messed about too much.