Naturally Beautiful Ways to Improve Your Landscape With Stone
Landscaping is a unique art form, balancing the natural beauty of your region and terrain. There are many landscaping styles to choose from but the one that keeps coming back is a natural landscaping style using stone, planters, and flower beds instead of plastic and concrete to shape your space into something beautiful. Whether you are planning to landscape a commercial property or a residence, it's important to consider the natural beauty of your local terrain and the rocks that occur natively here.
Natural stone makes a great accent to any landscaping design because stone is the natural decorator for the great outdoors. Commercial grounds and home garden can be landscaped to accentuate the natural beauty of the local wildlife, including the local rock types and formations. There are many ways to decorate with stone that mix the simple elegance of nature with organized human aesthetics.
Natural Stone Circle Seating
If you're looking for form and function, smooth boulders make a wonderful source of seating in a spacious garden or corporate grounds. Find long low stones for benches or even multi-level boulders for climbing and sitting. Create a ring of larger stones to create a conversation circle where guests can gather and chat in the open air. A smaller ring of stones in the center can become a campfire, if your region and property is cleared for safe burning.
Piled Stone Planters
Piled stone is a traditional decorating style as old as human civilization, especially piled stone planters. The method is to pile natural stones so they fit together into a garden or planter shape. Let the stones hold piled dirt and in the space, grow something natural to the region. Pick sturdy, vibrant plant life that really makes your planters pop. You can create multiple levels in your garden this way or one planter at a time.
Natural Paving Stones
If you're envisioning paved spaces, use natural local stone to pave. Pick flat pieces of stone and fit them together with large and small pieces like a mosaic. Fit them so they are all about the same level, dig down below if necessary, so that the whole pavement area is close to flat. Then fill the cracks and spaces with mortar. When the mortar dries, you will have a stunning patio that blends with the natural landscape yet also provides a clean paved area for human recreational space. You can lay out seating, host a barbeque, feature a statue,
Rock and Sand Garden
A beautiful way to take control of the land is to make yourself a sand garden. Rake it into meditative shapes or turn it into a singular work of art. However, a sand garden is just a large sandbox without a few hard points. Natural rocks and even large boulders are the perfect accent to a meditative garden. The rocks give a foundation to your ability to rake new shapes. In a sand garden, the rocks act as a kind of natural sculpture, each one spotlighted on its own stage surrounded by sand and other garden elements. You can also use natural stone to surround a real statue, accentuating the simplistic beauty of your garden.
Carving a Family Monument
One unique and meaningful thing to do with natural stone in your garden is to turn one boulder into a monument that will stand the test of time. Polish one smooth surface of an attractive boulder placed in your landscaping design. If you are decorating a family home, carve the names of each family member into the stone. Paint the stone every year and turn it into a part of your family history.
If you are a corporation decorating with stone, pick something meaningful to make part of your ground’s historical carvings. Pick something you can add to over the years. Carve the names of businesses in the building, individual team names that come and go, or the names of office pets. Share special dates, award days, or commemorate reaching special goals like your charity initiative or completed tech invented by your team.
River of Stones
Smooth river stones don't have to be at the bottom of a river. One of the best ways to minimize the need for water and increase the natural beauty of your space is to create a river of stones. Sometimes, multiple colors of stones are used to create an artistic swirl or sectional flow of stones while others, a solid mix of stones can create a gently glittering river
Natural Boulder Centerpiece
You never know until you see the perfect boulder that some rocks can be centerpieces without any alteration at all. Rocks form in incredible natural formations. Some break out of the side of a mountain with a natural beauty that can't be replicated by human sculpture or even digital representation. If you are moved by a piece of stone, it may be worthy of a place as a centerpiece in your landscaping. This is a great way to embrace the natural decorating style and the terrain of your surrounding vistas. Decorating with stone as a centerpiece says that your style is in tune with nature. Sometimes rock is all the sculpture we need to be inspired.
Cascade Into Stepping Stones
A stone cascade takes the form of a natural rock formation transformed into something human and beautiful. Start with a foundation of stone that forms a slope, then design a cascade of stones down the side using a sense of aesthetic beyond what nature can achieve. As the stones cascade down, even out the design and flatten the stones into a patio and a flow of stepping stones.
Lighting Your Stone Designs
Casting just the right light on your landscaping can make a subtle yet profound difference in appearance. You can add contrast, warmth, or drama to the scene with just a few hidden landscaping lights. Warm spotlights and overhead lights make a space feel welcoming. Covered outdoor living often looks most elegant with a single pendant light.
Subtle paver lights help your stone paths to glow. Dramatic path lights cast a geometric or baroque shadow while up-lighting illuminates the house in the night. Stylize your lamp posts to compliment your home.
Create garden spaces with stone design, then highlight the contents with a perfectly aimed spotlight. For larger features, you can highlight them to make them pop or silhouette to outline the feature in shadow against the house.
Your landscape design doesn't have to look like every other design you've seen. With the use of natural stone boulders, paving, and cascading rivers of stone, you can craft a unique landscape that is at once is artistic, intentional, and in tune with the natural landscape around you. Blend your manicured lawn with incredible stonework, both crafted and raw, throughout your landscape. Contact us to discover lighting solutions for your stone landscaping designs.
