My husband is pushing for a pea-stone walkway along the side of our house (with a border to keep the stones in place) because we have two pine trees and we are thinking the moving stones might help with dealing with the sap drips that get on our shoes. The thought being they would move around and the sap would wear off or become more hidden as the stones rotate. Would love to hear from others if this does or does not work.

we moved into a house that is on 1 and a half acres. while i love having a huge yard, the mowing is time consuming, but more than anything, we had to take a break from fertilizing (due to the cost) and our yard looks like hell now. crab grass and weeds took over and there is no lush green grass to see. restoring it next year would cost over $500.

so we are going to convert the main "hang out" area of our yard to pea gravel. i'm pretty excited about it. especially since these photos provide lots of ideas! to me gravel is kind of like leaves on the ground in the fall- the sound under your feet is sure to bring a smile.

Don't do it! I got rid of grass for pea gravel a couple years ago. 2 years out, the 30yr professional weed barrier that I laid down under the gravel, lets the weeds through all over. Pea gravel is round and thus hard to walk in, yet small enough to stick in the soles of your shoes -so it is everywhere in my house and car.

Additionally, it always looks bad; leaves and debris get stuck in it and are hard to rake out...and your feet leave divets that need to be raked weekly. This fall I'm planning on pulling it all out and going back to grass.

I would think that this would vary greatly based on area. LA? Great. Seattle? Not so great. In Seattle one never has to water the grass, and that gravel would turn into a nasty muddy lake several times a year.

Ugh. I think gravel/rock lawns are horribly high maintenance. All the trash, leaves and debris has to get picked or blown out or it looks junky. Weeds will still pop through and have to be pulled. If the underlayment breaks down, the rock/gravel gets imbedded. It's a pain to move around or plant in. It also doesn't do much good for the soil or wildlife.

A drought tolerant grass that's native or does well in your area is great imo. The problem is that too many people obsess over having a weed-free lawn of green perfection.

47- thanks for the info. yeesh, that sounds like a pain in the ass. i was thinking that i could use something like round-up (but probably not round-up itself) on the gravel every month to help with that problem, but the leaves and the rocks in the shoes don't sound like fun. hmmm.

I once had a pea gravel driveway at the house I lived in. It always got caught in people's boots and tracked inside.

Yeah, I'm having trouble with all the leaves that are piling up on my gravel (larger than pea gravel) and I don't know what the best way is to get rid of the leaves!

pea gravel should only be decorative, not functional. Get 1/4 to 1/2 crushed gravel and you can walk on that just fine. i would also recommend that it be used somewhat sparingly, and not as a sweeping ground cover.

My husband recently put in a gravel path between the sidewalk and the street. It looks really nice, but when I was walking on it yesterday he said 'watch out for the cat poop!' It's become 'the place' that neighborhood cats do their business.

the problem is you guys went cheap with pea gravel. if you want to walk/drive over the area get crushed gravel. It's more jagged so you can't walk on it bare foot, but it stays put. I have a 1930 (scribbled in the concrete next to a babies foot) hollywood style driveway and I have 3/4" gravel inbetween the stripes and on the side, I can drive my 1/2 ton truck over the sides and the gravel does't get everywhere. You need 3/4" gravel for a driveway area, walking area can go down to 1/2" but 3/4" is fine as well. There are tons of color options depending where you live (Los Angeles area we get reds, yellows and green, I went for the green). But the nicer looking colors can cost 2-10x more than the cheap plain ugly grey/white/black/brown mixtures.

As for where this stuff is appropriate, if I lived in a wet climate I would have grass, but grass has no business in Southern California. Long Beach Water Dept is actually giving me $2.50/sqft rebate for removing my lawn and going to a native lawn free garden. The end result of gravel isn't rocket science. If you have messy trees and messy plants, then you'll have messy gravel. If you let weeds take root, and mature over a few weeks, then yes, they CAN grow through weed barrier. Gravel itself does discourage weed growth, if you use 3" you are unlikely to have anything grow. If it does start to grow, and you address it within a couple weeks, it'll be easy to pull. If you let it grow for a couple months, then yea, it's going to grow into the weed barrier and be impossible to pull. If you don't have a termite problem, use mulch in the densely planted areas. If you do have a lot of termites, be careful of throwing too much mulch down around your house, it's an invitation for the buggers to grow and multiply in your yard.

another tip with gravel is that prices can be volatile. I was purchasing green 3/4" gravel for $70 a scoop (~1300lbs) in April. I came back to purchase more 4 months later and the price is now $130. I called around and it wasn't just this location trying to ream me, the prices went up at every place that carries it. So buy as much as you need the first time around. I had to switch to black lava rock for the planted areas (much cheaper) since $.10/lb of gravel is outrageous. The black and green contrasting areas looks good though. But definitely do not use lavarock for walkways or driveways, it's too light weight.

We just did this and hate it. No more
Bare feet in the garden and we're tracking stones everywhere. Bigger pieces would hurt more and track less. Smaller pieces the opposite . There is no balance.

Ours also always looks terrible because of stuff mixing in with it.

You could use a leaf blower on the gravel to remove fallen leaves, etc.

bad idea if you live anywhere it rains at all. all that water? sitting in puddles or straight into your basement.

There are a lot of water thrifty, low maintenance plants that can be used to replace grass without having a yard that ends up looking like the surface of the moon. I have a pea gravel driveway and hate it - lots of weeds and the gravel moves all over the place. Replacing it with crushed gravel is next on my landscaping to do list.

Bought a place with a gravel side and driveway. Horrible stuff that only looks good when it's freshly laid. Feels uncomfortable to walk on. Got stuck in tyre treads, shoes, and my dog's paws. Got tracked inside and scratched the floors.

Something people don't think about is how noisy it is crunch crunch crunch. With separate work hours we were constantly waking each other up. And we were still advised to water it every week in summer because the house started to crack on that side.

Now we have a cottage-style water wise garden filled with native plants with a paved section of path and a little bird bath. It was a lot of work to reclaim the yard because over the years the gravel had gotten impacted quite deep, but it was worth it. We mulch and never do any mowing and the birds love it!

It's also a bad idea if you're ever wanting to go back to having a garden -- it's hard to clean up and the gravel gets everywhere, including mixed into the soil especially if the weed cover deteriorates. It also requires a lot of maintenance to keep it looking good. I rented a house a couple years back where the previous tenants had used it everywhere as a 'lazy' alternative to...I don't know, basic maintenance. Not having money to hire a landscaper to fix things, you wouldn't believe the amount of backbreaking work I put into the garden before I gave it up as a bad job (the landlord wasn't going to reimburse me, so I was just doing it as a hobby) and just went for container and square foot gardening.

It seems like everyone is talking about uniform size pea stone and gravel, which tend to give you a bed of fairly loose stones that you can kick around alot. A better bet is to get something like dense grade crushed stone, which is a mix of uniform crushed stone and finer sand or crushed stone. Dense grade packs better, but will give you a finish that looks more like a gravel road. My recommendation would be to use stone dust - this is what is typically used in park trails. You could also put a layer of stone dust over existing gravel to fill in the gaps and give you a better surface.

Design-wise, some of the best applications of this I've seen are where the gravel/stone area is 6 inches or so lower than the surrounding land. This way you step down into the area, and all the stone stays put. Think of it like a sand box - you'll need a solid perimeter structure.

I just finished putting crushed gravel between all my raised vegetable beds, since they were such a pain to mow. I LOVE it. No, you can't walk on it in bare feet, and yes, there's the occasional weed. (Vinegar does the trick for those.) But otherwise it looks great.

No grass to remove, just bermuda that I took out by hand earlier, but a huge yard full of mud during monsoons made us install the crushed rock option this winter. Yes, it tracks in, weeds pop through (I pull the little guys immediately). hurts to walk on, gets everywhere, but so far I say on balance it looks good and I still like it.

If you are thinking of doing it definitely get crushed gravel over pea gravel! We put in plant beds and did the walkways and middle area with crushed gravel, it's dark gray and looks great. The crushed tamps down over time, something the pea gravel will never do. We got a few stone pavers- all we could afford- and artistically placed them in a walkway. Over time as we can afford more they will be easy to add.

I have pea gravel in a large chunk of my backyard and have been pretty happy with it. I have flagstones in the area closest to my house, and most of stray gravel ends up there. It's easiest enough to sweep it up every few weeks.

Our weed barrier has degraded significantly, and we do get weeds popping up in the spring. We picked up a propane torch specifically for weeds that knocks them out in no time. We also use a leaf blower to clean the leaves out of the gravel twice a year.

It's not maintenance free, but it's a whole lot easier than the grass was. And we use a small fraction of the water.

If you live in a place that gets snow, just don't put it down anywhere you might actually need to shovel, to get out to a walkway or driveway. Shoveling that stuff is evil.

I'm sick of lawns and weeds too. I've been looking at articles on xeriscaping (spelling?) and I've decided maybe I need to check on astroturf and cement and just have pots for flowers/shrubs. Then I could get rid of: spade, shovels, rakes, weeding tools, containers of herbicides, mole pellets, lawn mower and bagger, lawn roller, seed/fertilizer spreader, the soaker hoses, the partial bags of grass seed and fertilizer, left over mulch, weed cloth of various sorts that have NEVER worked, wheel barrow, edger, gas weed trimmer, pruning shears, cost of guy with truck to haul mulch, seed and fertilizer, storage shed and everything else associated with lawn/garden care. Yes, I want the "Life of Riley."

@home body, I have one thing to say: pine needles.

I just made a zen garden in my back yard using pea gravel within a surround made of concrete garden edging that vaguely resembles short, fat bamboo stakes. (At least I like to think it does!) The area contains a Japanese style birdbath and a rock, and adjoins another enclosed planting area with a Japanese maple tree. I underestimated the pea gravel and I bought more to add, so it should be at least 3-4 inches thick on top of a weed barrier that drains water on top of tamped soil. Weeds may happen, and I will pull them. This isn't an area to walk on so I'm not worried about the ramifications others here describe. But I am thinking about the leaves and pine needles that fall will probably bring, and hoping a leaf blower or torch will solve the problem...

Any yard treatment you attempt without proper preparation and some idea of the water flow/seasonal changes/ maintenance issues is not likely to make you happy.

Most puzzling are the posts that warn of a muddy mess come rainy season. That exactly why and how I use gravel beds. The water runs right through them without standing or soaking in.

I'm using tamped and cleared soil covered with heavy plastic underneath the gravel areas and an appropriate border and seep holes in low spots.

In one walk, big flagstones are anchored with small irregular gravel (pea gravel would never work).

In an area designed to hold pots of herbs by the kitchen, larger gravel keeps over watering from pooling and makes the big pots easy to move around.

This caught my eye, as we are moving into a rental with a very large backyard. However, the grounds are basically dry, cakey soil covered in old leaves. In other words, it doesn't look like it will grow much. I don't want to spend a fortune to till the soil and replant, so I though gravel. Especially since its a desert area of Southern California. Any advice??

Hmm ... let me think: nice cooling grass or ground cover around my house, or hot hot hot gravel?

@businessgypsy, your garden makes me weep. The gravel's nice, too.

I love the look of a well maintained rock garden or gravel path. The key word is well maintained. I have a gravel walk around my house and it's a pain. The gravel doesn't stay in place, but it doesn't get tracked into the house though. But the walk pretty much looks like crap since I have 40+ trees in my yard and at least half of them are pines. There's no way to blow pine needles out of gravel. If you have a lot of trees, gravel isn't worth the hassle of keeping it nice looking.

Looks nice but as others have pointed out it's still not maintenance free. I live in Houston where we have annual rain fall near 48 inches! We never water the lawn. The warm climate and generous rain mean a lot of weeds. Our naturally healthy lawn does a great job of weed blocking. I'm a rock nut but I'll stick to a few small accents here and there.

I'm currently in Tucson. What's a lawn?

I am with you RYTTU3K....but in Phoenix.

That being said, I hate my gravel backyard. I have never been so sick of rocks in my life. I don't want to deal with the maintenance of grass, so i am searching for an alternative to both.

In British gardening books you often read about gravel paths. It seems that they just rake them to keep them nice. I agree that you want crushed not pea gravel. What about ground covers? Every region would be different but here in the PNW we grow periwinkle (with stepping stones) on our boulevard and ajuga in our shady back yard. Both are evergreen. While our daughter was growing up my husband insisted on keeping lawn in part of our back garden. We just mowed it and didn't worry about weeds that were green. The kids didn't care and I put my efforts into the beds and borders.

We swapped out grass for gravel and it was the best thing ever. The grass was in poor condition when we moved into our house, due to a large hazel nut tree in the garden. The grass never saw any sunlight and was full of moss. We hired a builder to put in retaining walls for flower borders and then he lay 4 ton of gravel over a weed membrane. Yes you have to pick up fallen leaves (but I did this with the grass) and make leaf mould every year. and as for stones coming into the house we take our shoes of at the door so it's not a problem.

We have river stone in our backyard. Too big to get stuck in shoes. Smooth and easier on the feet than crushed gravel. Pretty. It is a pain to keep it weed and leaf free. We have dogs and a relatively small city backyard, so it 's a good solution for us. Grass really isn't an option if we want to let the dogs outside.

I just bought a home with a huge gravel driveway of medium sized river rocks and pea gravel next to the garage. It took up half of the garden space, so I've been digging it up. It was extremely messy, weeds came through it, and the basement started to leak where the gravel touched because there were no plants to suck up extra rainwater. I wish I could go outside barefoot. I don't recommend gravel here in Ohio.