DIY pebble garden

cruais

Hoping someone can give advice to help out.

Our back garden is ugly as sin. When we bought the house, it had warped decking in which we removed.

What remained underneath was old concrete and to the right hand side, gravel, where what appeared to be the home to an oil tank, once upon a time. This now has grown thick weeds.

Money is very tight at the moment with a baby on the way so was thinking up a quick way of renovating the garden.

Is it possible to pebble stone the garden, on top of concrete or would it be necessary to dig the concrete first and then lay the weed sheet.

Also any advice on where to buy the pebbles in bulk?

Many thanks

By pebbles, presumably you mean decorative stone? (like gravel?).

From my very, very limited experience, if you're putting down enough stones, you can just put them on the concrete. I can't imagine there being any real downside. If you're only putting a thin layer down, though, you'll see the concrete everytime someone kicks a stone out of place.


I found a group called Strata Ireland on DoneDeal. Went to their website and ordered from them. They seemed fairly cheap for decorative stones. They're an NI based company but their prices are great. I think it was something like €110 or €115 for an 850kg bag of pink granite delivered to my door by courier. Best i could find and I'd have no issue using them again.

You can get smaller quantities, and im sure there are cheaper stones than the ones I got (and more expensive ones, too) but I just went with what I liked the look of (found the pink granite in Woodies, but buying from them would have cost a fortune!).


This is them:

http://www.strataireland.com/pages/view/decorative-stone-store


My best advice is to buy more than you need. You can always pile it on higher. I made the mistake of only buying one bag, and had myself convinced one bag was overkill. But in the end, i was considering a 3rd bag.

jack of all

You can get cheaper crushed stone (chippings, as they're often called), probably 10mm screened limestone, delivered in 1 tonne bags and even cheaper if you have a trailer and can collect yourself. For young children round beach pebble would be safer but it would probably cost close to €150 per tonne delivered, and 1 tonne doesn't go very far unless you are going for a minimal depth of cover. Also you may want to consider the long game- we had some pebble areas in our own small garden for 10 years or so, but I decided to get rid of the lot this year when I was remodelling the garden and in conjunction with some other building work. The pebble was nice to look at (and cheap admittedly) but I cursed it every time it was dragged into the house, everytime I had to wheel a bike/ lawnmower/BBQ etc across it etc. Also it became a nuisance in Autumn when neighbours' trees shed their leaves and there was no easy way of cleaning them up. As leaves etc broke down over time a solid inch or so of muck and dirt accumulated ontop of the weed barrier below. I replaced the lot with concrete paving and would be hard pressed to recommend pebble again, unless you've very little trees around you!

macnug

I'm thinking of doing this in my garden, from what I've heard go for 20mm stones to avoid them getting caught in your shoes. My local builders providers are selling it for 90 a ton, shop around op.