Natural Stone Suppliers

There are two places to start your search for natural stone building materials - especially stone for garden paths. If you happen to be in a large home center, look in their gardening section or where they have masonry products. You may very well find stone in manageable quantities. Different parts of the nation will have different types of stone. Why? Because the majority of the cost of the product is freight. Brick is the same way. It isn't that the brick is expensive - it is the fact that it costs a lot of money to move it around. For this reason, your best chance of obtaining natural building stone is to use rock that is locally available.

The type of stone that is closest to your city and easiest to quarry will often be the least expensive. A good stone supplier should have a wide variety of materials. Ask about durability if you are thinking of using a stone that is not native to your locale.

Many cities have supply houses that sell nothing but stone. There are several in Cincinnati. If you live in an area blessed with lots of rock, you can often find your own stones in creek beds or along road cuts. Mother Nature dresses the stones for you if you are patient! You will find rock - just open your eyes!

At the time I wrote this bulletin, I knew of only one supplier that had good national distribution of its natural stone product. This particular product is the quartzite that is one of the most durable stones you can find. It comes in two colors: a light brownish tan and a shimmering blue green. The stone comes sorted so that you get stones of all the same shade in one batch. Check out this web site for pricing and locations near you where the stone can be purchased:

• Vengeance Creek Stone, Inc.

Related Articles: Natural Stone Path, Building a Path of Natural Stone

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Constructing Garden Pathways

Building a good looking garden pathway is a low-tech project. It requires few tools and just a moderate level of skill. The biggest challenge I find, is that of planning. In other words, if you are just creating your garden and you get your pathways wrong, you may have a clumsy setup once you are finished.

Get Some Graph Paper

You can often buy a large piece of 1/4 inch graph paper from an office supply or artist supply store. Use this to create a scale plan of your building lot or your garden area. Accurately measure major landmarks such as trees, garages, playsets, etc. and site them on the plan. The blank area that remains is now yours to play with.

Visit a local garden or zoo or some other place that has garden paths. Note how they have gentle curves. Look at the spacing of the paths and how close they come to objects. Take your time and begin drawing the path or pathways on your plan. Be sure you make them the correct width on the plan. A 2 foot wide path is great for one person, while a 42 to 48 inch wide path is what you need for two people walking side by side.

Get Your Materials

You will need to get your stone and the leveling base that goes beneath the stone. Get your tools at the same time. All you need will be different shovels, a wheelbarrow and possibly a rock hammer and chisel.

Decide On Your Look

Are you going to do a sidewalk type path that has solid paving or are you just going to do stepping stones? The stepping stone approach is definitely the easiest way to go. It also looks very natural. An avid gardener will often plant small plants in between the stones for a very woods-like appearance.

The Solid Path

The chore of digging is made infinitely easier with a round point shovel. This type of shovel is made to slice into dirt. The tip of the shovel looks a little like the spade design on a deck of cards.

How much dirt should you remove? Since the pathway will not have any other traffic than foot traffic, you just need to remove the thickness of the stone you are installing plus 2 inches. The two inch space will be filled with small crushed gravel or coarse sand. These materials are basically self-compacting and allow you to adjust the height of the stones with relative ease.

The self compacting quality of these materials should not be underestimated. If you simply put your stones on the earth, your walkway stones may develop a troublesome tilt after a few months.

The stone you decide to use is rarely consistent in thickness. For this reason you need to adjust the amount of sand and/or gravel fill on a stone-by-stone basis.

Fitting Stones

Some - well actually most - stones are a bear to trim. Simply striking them with a hammer is not the way to go. A cold chisel and a solid surface under the points of the stone you are striking will often yield satisfactory results. Flagstone installers have a snapper type tool that allows them to trim thinner stones quite accurately. The snapper is sort of like a big vise that bites down on the edges of the thin stones.

It is always better to trim off small amounts at a time. Don't try to crack off large chunks at once. If you do, you will end up with many small unusable pieces.

Trim stones by drawing the line you intend to cut. Tap along the line moving the chisel with each moderate strike of the hammer.

Related Articles:  Natural Stone Pathway, Natural Stone Path, Suppliers of Natural Stone

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My wife and I have built several different garden paths. One of the paths was built years ago by me. This one actually is a dual purpose walkway. It connects our driveway to a side porch door. The curved path goes right through a shade garden under an immense pin oak tree.

I created this pathway using paving brick that I cemented to precast concrete pads. Each brick pad is about 17 inches square. I made a mistake and prefabricated the pads before I placed them. I underestimated how heavy they would be. Each pad weighs about 125 pounds! It was a nightmare trying to set and level each pad.

A Partial Plan

This experience taught me that you need to plan each aspect of a job. Kathy and I had a great concept and design, but I had failed to thoroughly think out the mechanics of placing the plan into action.

The lesson for you in all of this is be sure you can handle the physical requirements of the job. If you intend to build a garden path using native stone or some other heavy material, think about every movement. For example, rocks go into car trunks much easier than they come out!

Rock Spacing

My brick pads only have about 6 to 7 inches of spacing between the pad edges. They are so close that there is more brick in the path than soil between them. How do you get accurate spacing for a stepping stone pathway? It's easy! You just need to get your bare feet wet and then walk across a dry piece of concrete or blacktop.

Once you do this, you will have the center points of each of your steps. If you want to avoid taking uncomfortable giant steps in your garden, you need to make sure your stone placement matches your stride.

This method also demonstrates that large path stones may not work. My brick garden path is an excellent example. If my pads had been 19 inches square, there would be practically no space in between the individual pads. Remember, planning is everything!

Solid Garden Paths

A solid garden pathway to me means one with no soil in the pathway. I have been through botanical gardens where the pathway is simply gravel. There is nothing wrong with this as long as the gravel is very small - say 3/8 inch diameter AND angular. Never use rounded gravel for pathways. The stones move when your foot hits them and it is like walking in sand. Always use crushed or angular gravel for every aspect of garden pathway construction.

Another popular garden path design is to lay flat stones so they look something like a crude jigsaw puzzle. Each stone is separated by a one inch irregular space that you fill with crushed rock dust and small stone chips. This pathway takes more time to build but it is very distinctive.

Drainage - Think Roads

Have you ever looked closely at how roads are built? The next time you cross a street pay attention to the shape of the road. If the road is level, note how the center of the road is higher than either side. This is called crowning. Road builders found out years ago that standing water in a road is a big mistake and actually leads to premature failure.

You need to crown your pathway and keep in mind that water draining down either side of the path needs a place to go. If you don't do this, you may need boots when you stroll through your garden after a heavy spring shower.

The crown doesn't have to be severe. I doubt that you could feel a half inch difference in elevation between the center of your path and the edges. You would feel the difference if you walked across the path from edge to edge, but this isn't realistic, is it?

Take your time and select a stone that is affordable, durable and matches your taste. If you take your time, your garden path may well be your legacy!

Related Articles:  Natural Stone Pathway, Suppliers of Natural Stone, Building a Path of Natural Stone

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