How to Achieve Low Maintenance Landscaping with Rocks in Four Steps: A Stone’s Throw Away from the Biggest Makeover Yet

I don’t know about you, but summer to me is all about making the most of those extra hours of daylight and enjoying a more carefree lifestyle.

Summer is NOT about the extra work that ensues once all your outdoor plants start growing and blooming again. Yes, I love the look of green grass and the colorful blooming plants (who doesn’t want to have the greenest lawn and be the envy of everyone in the neighborhood because of the curb appeal of your HGTV ready house?). However, I want the look for less…work.

My goal for all outdoor landscaping is low maintenance landscaping or no maintenance landscaping when feasible.

Thank goodness I have found the key to this low maintenance landscaping: landscaping your plant beds with stones. This achieves a beautiful, clean, low maintenance flower bed. All it takes is the initial job and then just some light weeding and leaf blowing in the fall.

I am going to take you through the process of how I achieved this beautiful low maintenance landscaping effort and hopefully even blow you away with some fun before and after photos because isn’t that the best part of any project? I especially love watching other people do the work and then get to fast forward to the pretty part! However, DIY is all about getting your hands dirty, doing the work, and saving money. Remember, this can be done through hiring it out or DIY. I recommend doing it yourself – it’s a good workout and just takes a weekend!

I am so excited to share this post because of the dramatic before and afters – and the lasting results of this look. Now my life is easier and my house is prettier! Even if you aren’t the biggest fan of landscaping; it’s okay. The dramatic change will still be exciting. I am still excited about it, and this has been done for about two weeks…yes two weeks.

There are actually so many projects I have wanted to share that we did before this landscaping adventure. So I am a little behind. So many projects, so little time! However, this is actually a project that I have been wanting to do for YEARS. So you can imagine my gratification to have it finished! It was also one of those projects where you wondered: why did I wait so long! It really was not that hard – just a little sweat equity!

This project’s goal was to landscape the flower beds in the front of the house and take them from shaggy, overgrown, and ugly to clipped, clean, and beautiful.

Step One: Take out plants you do not want to keep.

When I moved into this house, there was just old landscaping and this terrible ground cover that had just gone crazy. It had started to run the place! It bugged the heck out of me and became what my nightmares are made of. Picture the ground cover coming to life and attacking me in my home until I am wrapped up like a mummy. Yeah, it was that scary.

So one random day after work I just took a hoe and hacked at it like crazy. It was time to say goodbye to the scary ground cover! You don’t own my home anymore or haunt my dreams!

Spoiler alert” I didn’t do that great of a job either. It was pretty resilient and I got tired after having already worked a full work day. The hubby came out after my mess and had to clean it up. I didn’t have the muscle to get at that roots.

Time Saving Tip: Do this when the ground is saturated after a good rain. This will make the job of ripping up old landscaping much easier. Also, feel free to invite friends and entice them with free food and drink!

So that was my first attempt to get rid of the terrible ground cover. Just taking that out made me happy, but we still had a long way to go…and a long way to wait until we were able to tackle it again. Don’t be like me and have this be the project that never ends. Just tackle it in a weekend; it’s totally doable.

Step Two: Buy new plants.

Last fall, we were randomly at Lowe’s, and I had the urge to finally start (or would it be finish?) the project. So we bought a ton of plants and put them in…during the effects of a hurricane. Remember that one that ran up the east coast last fall? Yup, during that time.

Eric’s parents were in town, and we wanted to take advantage of his Dad’s superior landscaping skills. So in went the plants during a hurricane. Why all the explanation? Because up until that point (and I am still kicking myself about this) I never took pictures of anything. Hence the minimal original house pictures. Now you are up to speed. This is where we were from September up to a few weeks ago.

Money saving tip: I like to buy the smallest plant to save money. They up charge you for more developed plants; however, with a little patience and a lot of watering, you will have bigger plants before you know it. 

Step Three: Put down barrier paper to save yourself from weeds.

I already think it looks better! Having a darker color makes the plants pop with contrast. This step was fairly easy but definitely a two person job. The hardest part was cutting the slits for the plants. It takes some measuring to ensure you are getting the hole in the right place for the plant. Plus, the plants like to poke you so make sure to wear gloves!

Also, make sure you get a lot of anchors to hold the barrier paper down or use rocks from around the yard. We used both. This helps keep everything in place as you are cutting, pulling, and shoving prickly plants through holes.

After we finished this step, life got in the way a little and we proudly boasted a half finished project in our front yard for a few weeks.

Step Four: Pick, order, and shovel in your rocks.

Then we finally had the time to move on to our next step. This is where the real rewards come in regards to how your home’s curb appeal is shaping up.

Can you guess what material we decided to use (hint: title!). Yup, rocks (or stones).

What made us choose rocks? Two words: oak trees.

We have two gorgeous oak trees in our front yard. The problem? They drop humongous amounts of leaves in the fall, pollen in the spring, and acorns all year round. When I say humongous, I mean it. So much that it dictated this decision.

Rocks will allow us to leaf blow the beds, which makes it much more low maintenance (there it is again!). If we went with mulch, we would be there on our hands and knees scooping up pile after pile of debris and lugging in our cart back to the fire pit (ask me how I know).

Then there comes the whole burning episode which takes time (and our neighbor likes to call the cops on us when the smoke blows into his yard). Plus, burning is not an eco friendly practice; if you can, compost your yard waste.

Also, mulch has to be put down every year to keep the beds looking nice. That means landscaping work every spring in our front beds. That is exactly the opposite of what we are looking for in our home’s landscaping. Maintenance free is the name of the game! More time to cookouts! Less time with mulching!

Although rock was a pricier initial investment, we consider it exactly that, an investment. Our nicer neighbors (meaning the don’t call the cops on us) have had stone for years. Before we started this project, we used them as “experts” to talk about the pros and cons of landscaping with stone. They raved about how rocks are low maintenance landscaping, that they’ve had them for years, and never regretted the decisions. Let them live and us learn!

We had fun shopping around at all the stone lots. There are many choices – light, dark, red, purple! We decided to go with a nice neutral (we didn’t use this one but if you want to order online it’s a close look to ours).

Eight scoops later (delivered thankfully) there was no turning back on this project.

Now that’s a big pile of rock (six tons to be exact!). So we set to (hard) work of putting this stuff down. Thankfully we had some muscle around to help.

The in-laws are living with us for a while so we have put them to work (love you both so much!). Armed with shovels, rakes, carts, and buckets we began. Oh, did I mention it was lightly raining? It tends to rain when we have big projects scheduled. So we might need a rain coat if you have our luck. 🙂 We haven’t melted yet! Plus, it made it a more pleasant experience in tempering the heat.

Here are a few action shots.

I had the much easier job as the raker. The big men decided they would be the shoveller and haulers. I would have gladly hauled some around, but why fight too hard for that job? Mine was just as important! So here we have it folks, the final reveal:

Want to see more low maintenance and maintenance free landscaping projects?

• Click through to my Flowers and Plants page which includes this project and others like:
  • The next reveal on how the rest of the stones were used. 
  • How to winterize plants to use for next year. 
  • How to replant bulbs. 
• Check out my Gardening tab for projects like:
  • My guide to gardening.
  • How to grow, harvest, and freeze green beans for a year.
• Mind in the gutter? Or like mine, in the shutters?
  • Check out how I painted the shutters from the maroon you see in the pictures to a crisp black. It’s like I got brand new shutters for the cost of one gallon of paint!

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