Sherry

Why not, give it a try and see how it looks. I have heard of people painting dead lawns green so why not gravel. Growing up in Miami, I use to see all kinds of yards, even an all gravel one with a lawnmower painted gold chained in the middle of the front yard.

Liz

Only you know what works for you, Sherri, but I have a feeling you're not quite sure about this. I just wonder if you'll be able to find the right color of green. I personally like the color of my roses against the concrete driveway and really like grass only where it looks natural, in cooler, rainy areas. Elsewhere grass to me looks out of place. Just my personal opinion though, and I don't really want to discourage you from something that really seems like a good idea to you.

Ingrid

Why not try some colors other than green? If you paint it green, it might look like an attempt at fake grass. If you look at it as a blank canvas, you can have a work of art in your garden and add all sorts of color. You could stencil designs, or just paint swirls and stripes.

Just a thought.

Somebody painted their gravel a few streets away, and it does not look good. They just spray painted the top of it - oversprayed onto the sidewalk and trees, too - and as the gravel gets disturbed, you see the unpainted gray. If you do paint it, maybe you can get it more thoroughly painted - although I wonder if paint will chip.

Natural is more my thing, but it's your garden, do what you want!
Anita

Perhaps you could find gravel with some other colour to mix with the grey? My gravel is also grey, the most common colour of Swedish granite. But there is pink granite, too, which I prefer so I have bought a load of the pink to put on top. It won't stay put of course but the effect will be a little softer even after it gets mixed in with the grey.

The pictures I have seen of your garden are beautiful, and the painting the gravel green would look very strange.

From what it sounds, you are tiring of the gravel, maybe take it up in an area and put down mulch, see how it works.

What about lava rocks that are burgundy in color? It would be a nice counterpoint to the green on your roses leaves.

Perhaps what you're missing is different shades. Grass is green, yes, but it has different shades of green in it. I personally think if you paint the gravel, it will not be what you want, because it will not look natural (it won't have different shades).

The suggestions of putting different stones on top is a good one, I think. Try to find some different shades of green/gray that will give your eye something to see besides just flat grey. Or, as someone suggested above, you could paint it a design. That would still give your eye something to look at beside just flat grey.

Good luck in whatever you decide. :D And good luck on selling it to your husband. Sometimes that's the hardest part!

Crushed granite won't take paint well. The black mica will just absorb it and stay black and some of the white minerals...paint won't stick to.
There's also the health of the roses. That white/gray color will reflect sunlight. The darker the gravel, the more heat the ground will hold (and the happier the spider mites will be nearby).

All that granite grit...can you grow any lavenders or rosemary? I remember there's a particular lavender that did well near Charlotte NC, and my local herb-y friends all plant their dry-land herbs in 'soil' that's like 90% chicken and or granite grit.

Now about the grass you crave. I, too, have a love of the green grass of Canada. Not the coarse grasses that are preferred for our part of the world. But for the warmth and low heating bills, we pay a price and that price is ugly grass.
We got a bit lost in western Toronto one time and...I didn't want to leave. Every home had grass that made me want to pull off my shoes and run barefoot. So soft and such a lovely shade of green. Reality bites, however, and those lovely grasses would be burned to a crispy disaster in my summer months. (I also have lusted over the thyme border in some photos of Prince Charles' Highgrove, until I started seeing how those thymes did in zone 6b/7a. Reality bites.)
There's no easy answer. But just try to work with what works well in our zones, push a few plants here and there, and then watch the snow fall in Pennsylvania in October (on their beautiful green grass.)

Hi - I had somewhat the same problem, here in St Pete, but I went to Home Depot and Lowes and got some pavers, 12 inch ones, cost abt. $1.35 or so each... and put down alternating red and white, it looks good now that they have gotten dirty, they look like an old patio from somewhere exotic, I have expanded it and now have very little grass, and put some red bricks where there was an opening, 43. cents each at Home Depot........ sally

OK, you asked me not to laugh, so I won't . . . I venture to say, however, that painting your gravel will prove to be a colossal waste of time, effort, money and paint (and perhaps gravel as well). ;)

Sherry, I don't think you should rush into this. If I were you, I would get a very small amount of paint, put some gravel into a shallow box (or maybe on a piece of plywood), paint the gravel, and then put the whole shebang on a part of your gravel path by some roses, and THEN consider it for a week or so. My own feeling is that the painted gravel will look flat and chalky next to real plants. On the other hand, maybe it will look fine. Only one way to find out, but I think a limited experiment, like trying on a dress, will be a lot less costly in time and money if it turns out to be not what you had hoped.

Laura

Instead, try putting clumps of ornamental grass here and there in the gravel. That's a new trend around here for people who still want some green but want to save water.

Paint won't stick well to gravel, and when the paint starts to flake off it will look even worse...

Wow, thanks for all of your thoughts. Well, if paint won't stick to granite, I guess that's that. Laura's idea of painting a sample in a box was good and made me think of painting some quantity of gravel and then scattering it among the rest, kind of like the aquarium gravel idea, but I know aquarium gravel and colored glass chips are expensive. I never thought about the paint not sticking. Good thing I know a geologist! Planting anything in the gravel will prove to be a maintenance problem for differentiating the plants from the weeds that want to take over.

Ann, what about the new spray paint that sticks to plastic? Or epoxy paint? Does anything stick?

I agree that this idea had the potential to be a tacky disaster, and I appreciate everybody's help. It has tempered my enthusiasm for the idea. :)) But I like the mixing idea.

Sherry

Experience is the best teacher. Paint that gravel, and paint it SOON!! Wait a month or so, then rush back here to let us know how it worked out for you.

Sherry, a thought about epoxy paint...the kind that you use on the garage floors...we painted the garage floors a couple of years ago and it lasted about a year before it started showing tire tread wear. So even that stuff is not 'wear proof'.

-terry

Windeaux, I appreciate your enthusiasm (!) but I won't be doing anything any time soon. Too many things to do already.

Thanks, Terry, too bad about your garage floor, but that's good to know. Hmmm, I wonder if a solid stain would work...

Sherry