In the season, I go on a lot of garden tours. I tend to favor those gardens designed by professionals, but you can always pick up useful knowledge, even when the gardens do not have the obvious finished look that you get with an expert designer and installation team.
I've seen scores of gardens with pea gravel paths, but I've never seen one with stone insets like the one shown here. I simply loved the funky kind of look that the additional stones add to the gravel. I mean, how do you jazz up pea gravel? This homeowner obviously had one answer.
I'm not sure that I'd go for the stacked stone objet's d'art, (are they glued together???), but I sure liked this homeowner's decision to experiment with the materials and come up with something that you certainly won't see in every other garden with pea gravel. What you usually see is the brick or cobble or flagstone edge to keep the stuff from flying all over the place, but I really do think the darker small stones add a real designer's look to this path.
As you can see from this larger view of the back yard, the pea gravel seems to fit well with overall casual look of this garden; it makes a good bed for the containers where vegetables and herbs are growing; and it looks nice against the stone wall in the rear of the photo.
And the homeowner didn't stop there. In the photo below, he obviously considered the inset stone pattern as well when the front yard drive was installed. The insets bring the landscape together and help unify front and back yards.
(Click on photos to enlarge)
(photos ©Jane Berger)
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