landscaping gravel

Landscaping Gravel

Gravel is a wonderful landscaping element with a variety of uses. Apart from being a finishing material in landscaping gardens, gravel has some great qualities that makes it a very important material in some of the most important aspects of landscaping process.

Any type of landscaping can be categorized into two basic types such as soft landscaping and hard landscaping. Use of gravel as an landscaping element comes under the hard landscaping category. This is because it is a material with stone as a basic component. Because of the hard nature of the stone, it is capable of accepting pressures such as human movement or even base material for landscaping pavers.

Gravel can be man made or natural. But the basic function of gravel always remains the same. Decorative stones such as granite or marble can be crushed into pieces to form small pieces and can be used a gravel as well. There is only one disadvantage of using such kind of machine crushed gravel. it will always have pointed edges so will be a little hard to be used as a filler for walkways or pathways. However such kind of gravel cab be used where human movement is not present.

Depending upon the color of the original stone which gets crushed the gravel will acquire it's color. Some of the potential places where such kind of gravel can be used are rock garden, ponds, bottom of flowerbeds, sculptures/statues.

The second type of gravel is the natural gravel. This type of gravel comes directly from river beds and unlike machine cut gravel these have round edges. Because of the flow of river the flowing water gives the gravel stone a rounded shape from the force of the flowing water. Such kind of gravel can be used in walkways because of it's smooth finish. This types of gravel comes in a wide range of colors too.

Another very important use of landscaping gravel can be done in hillside landscaping. If gravel used used on hillside it will hold the soil on the slopes together from flowing down which intern helps in healthy growth of the plants on a hillside. But if the slope of the hill is too steep then creating terracing arrangement is strongly recommended.