Where cats may visit I would use cobbles (river rock) so they won't be able to dig.

Cool house, great colours! And how refreshing to not want to burden it with foundation plantings.

I am not one of the people who is so knowledgeable about materials but as far as the decision-making process is concerned I think BBoy is on the right track on two counts: first, river rock is simply nicer to look at than gravel, even than pea gravel, and secondly I wonder about what critter issues you might have with different materials. Spiders, ants...? Mulch (if bark or other wood) seems to me to offer the worst of all seasons, holding moisture near the foundation in the wet season, and being dangerously dry and offering an unnecessary fire hazard in the dry season.

With four feet to work with you could actually use different stone sizes to make a real feature of it, along the lines of a dry creek bed I suppose; a base of pea gravel with some larger decorative stones as highlights. But I wonder if once the pea gravel is down, the leaf volume will look more substantial than you thought, and you will wish for bigger stone sizes.

I love the house! Imagine having a door to the garden in every room!! Maybe we WILL build if we move again.

I'm not sure about this, but I think that the larger size stone will have larger size gaps that will trap more debris than small stone. I had a crushed stone path that was fairly easy to blow leaves off of, it was stone with sharp edges, not rounded stone, so it packed together better than pea stone would, but not as attractive. I suppose if you're not going to walk on it, it shouldn't matter if it shifts around a bit.

When you rake or blow cobbles you can flick or pick much of the debris off, whereas small stone tends to get moved with the debris. Pea gravel travels anyway, because of the roundness of the pieces. If sold on using a gravel used crushed rock so it doesn't get moved around. I guess after it packs down and forms a hard crust visiting cats may not have a use for that either, it would also have the advantage of being better for walking on than cobbles. It's just not very decorative.

Thanks for the kind words about the house saypoint and karinl. Our builders, and just about everyone else, think we're crazy for building a little two bedroom house with 8 exterior doors. And for a lot of other unconventional things we've done. But we love it, and we're the ones paying for it.

Cats could definitely be a problem bboy, thanks for thinking of that. I've noticed several coming into our yard. The last thing I want is a 4ft litter box surrounding our house. Gravel sounds more functional as some of you suggested, but certainly doesn't have the aesthetic appeal of river rock. I just checked a supplier near us and they have some good options that seem reasonably priced.

karinl, you're right, mulch might hold the water up against the house, especially in the winter when snows blow up against the house. Thanks for pointing that out. Plus, I hate to think about raking or blowing leaves out of mulch, which will be enough of a challenge in our (planned) beds.

If we were to go with river rock, how deep would you suggest? Should we use landscape cloth below it or not? Are stone and bark the only options?

How about a low-growing drought tolerant groundcover like sedum? Some have nice winter color that would be visible when there was no snow cover, and they would be dense enough to keep the weeds down. On the shady side you could use a more shade tolerant ground cover, but the lack of rain might be a problem unless you found something that was drought tolerant as well.

Thymes attract bees when in flower, so right next to the house could be a problem if windows are open. Otherwise, the aroma of the foliage could produce a pleasant effect in summer--again, with windows open. Need to have the right soil conditions, gritty and droughty, or other plants will be constantly seeding in and patches of thyme will be dying out.

Thyme does attract bees, but this is just for a period of a couple weeks. I get some dieback during a hard winter with my thyme, but it usually grows back quite quickly. What they hate most (causing most dieback) is humidity combined with moist ground. The thick gravel mulch usually counters this quite effectively.

Unadorned gravel is not unattractive, but to some people it might tend to look a bit stark. I actually started with just gravel in a difficult area at the front of my house. I found that kids tended to kick it around etc, so it became kind of a maintenance problem. I got the idea of growing thyme over it, and it turned out to be one of my best ideas. Once it gets started you don't get many weeds and they are easy to pull. I find that lightly sweeping over it with a broom in fall removes debris (leaves, maple keys etc) fairly easily wihtout tousling the thyme plants too much. If you wanted to use power equipment, a shop vac would probably make it look pristine.

If you found you tired of just gravel but didn't want higher stuff, I would seriously consider the thyme. If your soil is adequate it should spread at a fairly satisfactory rate. I found that covering an area about half the size of yours densely took about 5 years, starting with just fairly scattered plants that spread by themselves and gradually stitched together. If they don't take, it isn't a big expense or effort.

If it's that dry under the eaves, plantings will need supplemental moisture. Gravel will travel and trap debris. (gook will blow into the river rock as well). Mulch is an added expense and likely to fade and need raking from time to time.

How about good ol' unadorned naked earth? Cheap, practical and even stylish. ;)

Eric will be coming over each week to screen out the cat droppings and dig out the weeds.

I doubt either weeds or the occasional cat will find "very dry" earth very appealing, so I should still have plenty of free time. :)

Are you kidding? Kitties love such places, the more like a litter box the better. Certain weeds, like Euphorbia peplus, which I have pulled out of many a dry crusty spot have no trouble popping up in compacted dusty places around here, where we get almost no rain in July. Back there in the humid and rainy eastern summers there should certainly be some of this as well.

I find your question to be interesting. Let's play around with some design thoughts. You do not indicate just how much gardening you wish to do on the site, which would be helpful in planning.

Leaving the earth bare around the house, which is low to the ground would lead to mud splashing up on the building and a 'trench' would form eventually from dripping water. Pea gravel is difficult to clear of debris. Larger cobbles make that job a bit easier. There probably will be a snow load dropping which would discourage planting low creepers around the house. If I were doing the design, and you had very deep pockets, random cut bluestone or sandstone (stone color that worked with house color) would be laid from the edge of the house outward, forming an irregular walkway around the house and the stone would be extended into several patio areas where needed. Into this walkway I would incorporate a few groupings of interesting large stone. On the outside of the walk garden areas would be planned that provided interest when viewed, both summer and winter, from the inside. This is an expensive 'fix' but as I studied your pictures my whole plan fell into place. Difficult to write in words.

So...back to the real world. Your first step is to study the prevailing wind patterns to understand just how debris is going to pile against the house. If necessary, pound some sticks in the ground with plastic streamers attached and study the wind patterns. Some areas around the house will be very quiet. Others will be hit full force. I would encourage you to use flat, large stone in the latter areas for ease of cleanup. In other more quiet spots use large cobbles. With a bit of thought the two types of stone could be married in interesting patterns. Don't work in straight lines. Curves, please. Hopefully this thumbnail sketch will give you a few ideas.

Brilliant nandina. I can see it and it looks lovely.

Patty

Hi everyone: Thanks *very* much for all the suggestions. I hadn't really considered a ground cover because I was thinking that it might require too much care to keep watered and weeded, but the idea of planting a ground cover over the rocks is a pretty excellent idea and as long as it is a relatively drought tolerant plant it might not require supplemental watering, as saypoint and some others suggested. The Thyme sounds especially nice, I love plants in the mint family.

Bare earth doesn't sound bad to me, although given the amount of rain we get, it would require some weeding. We are having eavetroughs installed next week, but in the photos the house was still being painted (hence the white service door on the garage and the white trim on the screened porch...as yet unpainted). So I don't think splashing water would be a problem. However, my partner doesn't think bare earth looks tidy enough.

Nandina, we do intend to do some gardening, but most of our beds will be away from the house. That's one reason we don't want to create a maintenance issue under the eaves...we'd rather spend our time in the beds. I love your idea of a bluestone pathway around the house, that sounds beautiful. However, "deep" is not a word you could use to describe our pockets right now. On the other hand incorporating bluestone in some places is an excellent idea, thanks! I'll look into it.

This is part of the reason the design forum is so interesting - all that regional variation.

See, here in Ohio (which is not all that different from Michigan, unless you are a college football fan), I have a front bed that lacks traditional foundation shrub plantings, in part because there's about a three-foot diameter strip under an overhang that stays dry. It is unmulched bare earth, and I've never had to weed it. We also get neighbor's cats through the yard on occasion, and none have "gone" there (cats like soft garden soil in my experience instead of hard dry ground). But maybe weeds and cats behave differently in seasonally soggy climates with high humidity (I'll have to Google Euphorbia peplus).

People frequently have an urge to "dress up" and/or conceal the area where home and ground meet, even if there's no ugly foundation to hide. It seems superfluous to me in this case unless individual taste requires it. In any case, I suggest that haringfan not lay down any material right up against the house, as one wants to be able to monitor for any early signs of termite activity.

Something else to consider when figuring this out, is that if you live in an area where the summer storms tend to come from the same direction, the side of the house facing that direction may get a fair amount of rain blown under the eaves. On that side, you may have considerable difficulty keeping the lawn grass out of whatever is there.

We have buried draintile with a 6" wide rock top directly under our 4' wide eaves. We tried to plant grass between the rock top and the house but didn't survive due to dry shade. The now bare black earth when rain does blow sideways leads to muddy paw prints from our pets. What about sand in this area?