Decorative stone, both natural and artificial origin, has now become a very popular element of landscape design. With this solid, beautiful and durable material, interesting ideas and ideas can be implemented. We will tell about the features of the use of decorative stone in the design of cottages in this article.
What stones are used in the decoration of the garden
To decorate the nuclear area, you can use both artificial stones and breeds of natural origin. Many prefer the second option, since the natural stone is durable and durable, besides they say that it has a special energy. Artificial stones are almost not inferior to natural analogues in terms of decorativeness, but they are much cheaper. Stones can be created with their own hands, for example, from concrete.
As for natural material, a wide variety of breeds can be used in the garden landscape design. Granite, marble, sandstone, basalt, pebbles, slate, limestone, etc. are considered the most popular options.
The stone is classified not only by origin, but also by processing method. Depending on this, the criterion of rocks may have a natural untreated view, be grinded, brushing, brushing-sawn, etc.
Decorative stones for landscape design can have various sizes and shapes:
- For large massive compositions, it is convenient to use stone boulders. They differ in massiveness, sharp raw corners.
- Boulders are similar to the boulders, but their form is smoother and rounded.
- Cobblestones are quite large stones, but they are inferior to boulders and boulders in their sizes.
- Crushed stone - small bulk material of different breeds. Rubble happens different fractions, its elements can be both cornerstone and smooth enough.
- Pebbles are rounded streamlined small stones. Thanks to high decorative qualities, many love to use pebbles to decorate garden sites.
- Stone crumb, although it is a waste of production, also found its use in landscape decoration. With its help, you can decorate the flower beds, garden tracks, create interesting compositions like stone streams or Japanese gardens.
Consider more popular types of breeds that are used in landscape design:
- Limestone is a lightweight material with low density and tendency to weathering, which has a rather wide color gamut. Limestone is used to create garden compositions, for facade finishing of houses and for internal wall design.
- A popular stone for landscape design is granite. It is distinguished by high density, hardness and durability. This is one of the most expensive, but also the most durable rocks. For long years, granite retains its form and does not change colors. In addition, mica, quartz, swarth, and other intersions, which are part of the stone, determine its decorative properties. Granite is highly appreciated by masters because of its diverse and attractive colors, as well as thanks to excellent performance characteristics.
- Basalt refers to volcanic rocks and in its strength is almost not inferior to granite. The distinguishing property of basalt is his porosity, as well as a beautiful and wide palette of the paints. The color gamut of this mineral is represented by black, gray and greenish shades.
- Sandstone has a relatively low weight, but it has good strength. Often, such a breed has a layered structure, but maybe fine-grained. Sandstone's shade palette is quite wide, but light colors are most often used in the garden design: beige, white, sand, brown.
- Slate is a layered mineral with a wide range of colors. Among the shades of this stone, you can meet black, green, blue, burgundy, red and even yellow tones. A similar breed is different by fragility, its thin layers may drop apart from each other over time, but it is this feature that landscape designers are played in their compositions.
- Easy and porous tuff at first glance looks unprepacently, but the rustic color is easily compensated by an interesting structure of this stone. In addition, Tuf perfectly absorbs water, which in many cases becomes the indisputable advantage of the material.
- Marble - the noble mountain rock of the crystal structure. Marble belongs to expensive stones, its value is due to a very long service life, extraordinarily high strength, excellent performance characteristics, a large variety of colors and exceptional decorativeness. The marble is well-processed, so it can be used both in natural and smoothly polished.
From the artificial stones, which are most often used to decorate cottages, you can allocate brick and concrete. These relatively cheap materials are rather durable, easy to work, eco-friendly. Concrete stones can be made personally, giving them any desired shape and shade.
Features of garden design stones
So that the stone elements looked harmoniously and served for many years, some subtleties must be taken into account:
- Stone type should be selected depending on which composition is created on the site. For example, terraces and retaining walls are best formed with sedimentary rocks and use non-typical, muted shades: sand, brown, gray. Minerals are suitable for a small rocarium, which are already used in the decor of other elements of the site. You can add roccage by any contrasting engines of other breeds. Alpine slides look most successful if there are massive volcanic boulders in them. For dry streams, ponds, waterfalls and other reservoirs, fine smooth pebbles are ideal and larger in the size of the streamlined shape.
- The climatic features of the site also play an important role in choosing a decorative material. For example, on the bottom of the reservoir that will freeze in winter, only such rocks need to be stacked, which are not cracking from a strong frost or temperature drop. Some stones have a property to collapse under the action of a strong wind or the scorching sun.
- The quality of the acquired materials is also important because operational characteristics and durability of stones depend on it.
- Before starting decorating the site, you need to create a project or an approximate plan of those compositions that will be placed in the garden.
Decorative stone, photo:
The ideas of the design of the country area with decorative stone
Japanese garden
Decorative stones are traditionally used when creating alpine slides or stone gardens. To date, a Japanese garden of stones is considered a popular variant of the stone composition. This is a minimalistic ensemble, which includes mainly stone parts and almost does not have plants. With the help of stones of different sizes, shapes and factions, in the Japanese garden it is possible to create a kind of picture. Large boulders in it will symbolize the element of the earth, sand and small pebbles will become a water element image. To emphasize the element of water with the help of wavy grooves made by rabl. The Japanese garden of stones is created according to certain rules:
- the elements of the composition must be of different sizes and is located spontaneously, asymmetrically;
- in the classic Japanese garden must be attended by 15 large boulders;
- locate large stones it follows that only 14 elements are visible from any viewing angle at the same time.
Stony Sadik
The rocky garden differs from the Japanese composition by the presence of a small amount of plants, but, as in the previous version, stones in such an ensemble play a major role. It is not worth putting the plants too close to each other, it is better to arrange them in the form of islands, divided by a significant distance. The main purpose of greenery in the rocky garden is to emphasize the beauty of the stones. It is also desirable to use no more than 4-5 different crops in the composition, while plants should be low and not close large boulders.
The rocks in the garden can be one breed, but no less interesting compositions of the compositions from different minerals. The stone garden may look natural and spontaneously, and can be a product with clear architectural forms and a pronounced style. Additional elements of such structures can be metallic, ceramic, glass details. In a stone garden, you can use even bricks or concrete blocks, the main thing is that all the elements are harmonized with each other.
The shape of a stone garden can be the most different: arbitrary or geometric, narrow, wide, oblong, etc. Such compositions can accommodate the boundaries of water bodies or lawns, to emphasize the beauty of architectural buildings.
Dry stream or reservoir
Natural or artificial reservoirs are present on many preservation areas. Stone is one of the best materials for the design of such a design object. Most minerals are not destroyed by water exposure, besides, many breeds are capable of playing with new colors if you wet them.
Decorative stones can be decorated with the borders of the pond or the shore of the stream. Of the massive boulders, it turns out to build thresholds for a cascade or waterfall. Color pebbles can be postponed bottom of the reservoir and even create a beautiful mosaic pattern, which will penetrate through transparent water.
Another idea of \u200b\u200bcottage design with decorative stone is a dry stream. This composition is easy to perform and does not require almost no care. Stones in this case will mimic water, for this you need to select the breed of a suitable shade. The drone of the dry stream is easiest to do from small pebbles, for example, from pebbles. The shores are better decorated larger in size with cobblestones or boulders. In such a stream, plants can be planted. Very fortunely, soil crops with small leaves or flowers, especially blue or blue shades will be very successful. To visually give such a "water" even greater naturalness, on its shores you can land those plants that usually grow near the streams, ponds or swamps.
Stone paths in the garden
Stone, both artificial and natural - perfect material for the construction of garden tracks. A stone path will look original and originally, if you combine paving slabs with natural elements of different sizes and shapes. Pebbles, smooth cobblestones, granite, clinker brick or concrete tile, blocking or gravel - all this can be used in the creation of garden tracks.
Stone Designs - Gabions
The decorative stone used in the design and finishing of the country area is suitable for creating unusual designs - gabions. Such a structure is a cell or a metal wire frame, filled from the inside by stones. As a result, it turns out a peculiar wall that can be used in landscape design as you like. With the help of gabions, you can share a plot to function zones, create bleeds and fences, make borders for flower beds or flower compositions.
Creating a stone grotto
Very unusual and interesting in the garden design looks artificial stone grotto. It can be completely any size. In a large grotto, it will be convenient to hide from the summer heat, as if in a gazebo, and the small structure will be just the original detail of the landscape.
Almost any plants will be successfully located near the grotto: high trees, lush shrubs, bright blooming cultures. Inside such a structure, you can equip a bench, install a fountain or make an artificial spring.
Design of decorative stone, photo: