I am also on the NH border in a section of my town known as Graniteville so I know what you mean! When we bought the property we had lots of rocks that came up before we put the lawn in. I collected them and sorted them and built several stone walls. I got books out of the library on how to build the walls. It takes a little practice to get it to look good. The smaller stones I collect in various sizes in black plastic nursery pots stored behind my shed. They are useful to fill the bottom of pots with stones when planting containers. The smaller stones are useful when making the stone walls also. You use them in the interior of the wall to fill in the gaps. One thing to remember is to use your best stones on the outside and save the rounded ones for the interior of the wall. I saved the flat ones for the top so I could make it look nice on the top. I used only stones I could lift safely, a couple of bigger ones I did use in the base of the walls with help from my husband to move them. It is great exercise. Also be sure to wear gloves when working with stone to protect your hands.

A good book on stone wall building will show you how. Check your library or library consortium. I can't remember what books I used at the moment.

I have some pictures to post of these walls but haven't had the time lately. I'll post back to this thread with a link when I get a chance to put them up.

People pay big money for rocks so I wouldn't get rid of them so quickly.

We toss them under the deck and have created a nice weed-free barrier. It looks nice and neat. If they are too big to throw, then we have built stone walls and paths with them. Any we can't use for that purpose get tossed into the woods, back to Mother Nature who so thoughtfully supplied them.

We use them for edging beds, small stone walls (not fancy ones), we have even dug them into the ground & made a pathway out of them. My son & daughter-in-law gathered all the fist-sized ones for a couple years. Then, they painstakingly dug them into the ground in a tightly packed circle pattern sorting the rocks by color and made a starburst pattern in the middle of the rock patio. It looks amazing! It was tedious and timeconsuming but they just worked on it a little bit at a time and used the opportunity of doing the rather mindless work to have some quality time together to just chat. They now have one of the most beautiful patios I've ever seen. The circle is 20' across!

Edging, and also I pile them under roof eaves-sections to keep the weeds down, and to keep the sand from piling up in that area when rainwater comes down. Also to avoid that 'trenching' thing that would be there if the rocks weren't.

Anything usuable gets transformed into what I call scrap rock walls and pathways. Unfortunately most of what I dig up on my property is shale. It's irregular in shape and chips and shatters so is no good for walkways or even walls. I toss this into the field next to my house or along the fenceline in back.

Sue

Most of the rocks I dig up end up edging a garden walk way. Or as fill when ever we need some for a project. The really huge rocks/boulders end up being a new focal point in a new garden.

Flat rocks go into walls and paving. Everything else gets thrown into the swamp as fill. I'm trying to build a causeway through the swamp for the tractor. Right now, I'm about halfway there.

Mine go into the bed as informal pathways - places to stand when I am in the garden and don't want to compact the dirt. I have dug others into the ground under the downspouts to break the stream of water from washing away my plants.

here's a couple of pix from last year. This first one is a section of the house (on the right off the edge of the picture) that is about 6-feet further out from the section you're looking at, and gets that rain-gushing thing.

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this one is obviously just edging, and a small stone wall to break up the monotony on the front garden:

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Like everyone else, I use mine mostly to edge beds, and the bigger, flatter ones I use to make paths. I don't have any really good-sized ones for a stone wall. My neighbor dug out a large area for a foundation to extend his house, and found some beautiful stones to make a small stone wall, but I don't do any digging of *that* kind, lol. So I just have the useless little ones that end up in a pile next to any beds that I have. I make my kids fill up buckets and dump the stones back in the woods. My DH says I have my own little chain gang, lol!

Tricia, any photos of this patio? I'd love to see it!

:)
Dee

Two tier terrace garden in December

...and in April

Raised beds:

Too many roots to dig in, but something could be built over them:

...and many more things.

I scrolled past the previous post kind of quickly, because I wanted to make a comment and was in a rush. I was about to write "Great pictures, George" then thought I'd better check - yes, it's George! Great pictures, George! There is no mistaking your garden - beautiful.

My comment... Before you edge a garden bed with rocks, specifically if the garden abuts a lawn - please know that it will be a MAJOR pain to mow around them. Small ones can get kicked up by the mower, and larger ones will require using a string trimmer for a neat edge. THey're fine if set back from the grass, but then their purpose is minimal.

I store mine (anything smaller than fist-size) in buckets (with holes in the buckets so water doesn't accumulate) and use them occasionally - for filling in dry wells, for building up areas of the gravel driveway ...

Bigger ones go into low, informal stone walls, well away from grass.

I'm sorry, I forgot to reduce size of one picture and ruined the whole thread.
Anyone know how to fix it?
If you could, please do.
Thanks,
George

Wow! This is so inspirational, and I love seeing the photos. My rocks look like the ones mmqchdygg is using (looks like you're in NH). ego45, did you actually build those walls yourself with rocks you dug up? It's a beautiful garden. I have to say, though, I'm kind of glad that I don't have that many large rocks - I might just give up on the whole gardening enterprise if I had to dig and haul that many big ones - LOL.

I'd love to try a low wall . . . some day. Now if I can just figure out where to put all those rocks in the meantime.

George, you have to replace the photo/file on photobucket, here's a link to a smaller version. Let me know if you have trouble downloading it.

I finally looked at your "musicians" - they're great!

DtD

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1065186}}

Nell, i know how to resize pictures BEFORE posting, but have no clue if i can reduce it AFTER the posting.
Is it possible to bring thread back to a regular format?

I am looking for rocks to finish edging a bed I started last year if anyone is looking to get rid of any. [g]

These ideas are so useful, I just printed out this whole thread - thank you, folks! With the major drainage project we're contemplating this season, there's bound to be a lot of rocks dug up. I was hoping to use them, and now see several ways to do just that.

Yep, know about the mowing thing. But we agreed that he'd mow the rest of the yard, and I have to weed-whack whatever I create. I'm good with that.

George, you just reminded me-I need more rocks for a project I'm working on around my shed. Can you bring a few to the swap? lol You know about the size I need. I wish I could dig up the kind you get. For those of you who haven't seen it, George's garden is even better in person than pictures.

I always enjoy the pictures-keep them coming.

Sue

Wow George -- Nice photos! I thought I had a lot of rocks....

Sue

George-
Talk to me about those square blocks along your driveway...is that cobblestone, or granite? Very nice.

See, if I had the kind of rocks George has, I'd be a lot happier! I just have those smaller, annoying kind. Vickima, trust me, while it's harder work initially to remove a large rock, once it's out you have a nice big hole, lol! And I'd much rather remove one large rock than 100 smaller pain-in-the-butt ones! Boy, they drive me nuts.

:)
Dee

Yup, another "edging beds" here. I also use the smaller ones to fill in gaps in the old stone walls. Amd to fill woodchuck holes...though fat lot of good that does.

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No fair, lakeview has rectangular rocks! Perfect for wall building. That's a beautiful wall, too.

I'm in the glacial outwash plain, so the rocks here are completely variable - they were brought south over huge distances by the glacier. The only thing they have in common is that they are rounded from being "tumbled" by the ice. Not so good for walls.

plenty of rocks up here that's for sure.

you can just make out, in the top picture, the cut pieces of chickenwire i put against the soil in a feeble attempt to defy gravity, haha

i do have to admit not actually building the walls... house was built 86 so I don't really know exactly how long they have been there.

at this point i just get to do the repair work!

I saw a great project in a book at my library for carving designs on smaller fist sized rocks using a dremel tool, the darkening the carved area. They look like they would make nice gifts for garden-minded friends and relatives. I'm interested in learning to do larger carvings in a large ledge face that is at the end of our driveway next to the garage. I REALLY want a waterfall to cascade over that face but my DH doesn't see my "vision". I'm working on a whole backyard design that will include that waterfall, so maybe if he sees is in writing he will get on the bandwagon (and the shovel :) )

I also use rocks for walls. I was recovering from a broken arm (ulna bone snapped in half) when we bought our house and I managed to finish a wall at the end of a foundation bed by creatively moving rocks. It came out very well. Stacked stone is easy if you follow some basic guidlines. Any book on stonework should be able to show you how.

These are great ideas! George's garden is wonderful.

When I lived in CT I used the stones for a rose garden-made a dry stone wall on three sides, open on the upslope, then had topsoil dumped in. Nice. Also embedded smaller stones in cement for walkways and wide borders. And large ones mortared to form entry stairs.

I have either small stones now or ones so big I can't move them. I will make splashguards for the dripline around my house as several of you had done.

For a while I dumped the stones from the garden in the back ditch and in the Japanese Knotweed bed. Now I realize the water needs to flow, so I will remove them. And the knotweed has become a great resource for me, so I will take the stones off them.

I love mosaic paving made from small rocks. We have some local Portuguese craftsmen who are masters at this, and I've seen it at some waterfront mansions near here. It also occasionally appears in design magazines; there are miles of it on sidewalks in southern Europe and Brazil.

I tried it in a small area between the house and a path in a work area, to see how dificult it is to do and how it would hold up. I sorted an enormous pile of small stones - about half the size of a fist - by color and size, and made wave patterns in an area about 9' by 3'. It looked great, if I do say so myself!

And, it was actually a lot of fun to do, though it took forever. A few stones popped during the first winter, which I reset. The second summer, my rampant thyme started growing between the stones, which I thought was a good thing. Now, about 3 years later, the area is just a mass of thyme.

If I was going to do this again, I'd prep the area the way we do for bluestone or brick paving, with a bed of sand, and use stone dust as filler. Might just do that as part of my next paving project, I certainly have enough rocks for it.

Great use of rocks, all you rock diggers. Lakeview, you have some amazing ones. And George, your property gives illustration to the saying that New England's biggest crop is rocks. All those came from your yard? Yow.

The first time my boyfriend came to New England from Georgia, he was amazed at how rock just "grows" everywhere here. The look of disbelief was priceless when he saw the boulders and outcrops that we don't even "see" anymore because they are such a basic part of the scenery.

Our stone walls and natural stone outcroppings are one of my favorite parts of our New England scenery. I always miss them when I go to a rock-less part of the country. I just read a really interesting book called Exploring Stone Walls by Robert Thorson, a geologist and stone-wall expert in Connecticut. He has written several books on the subject. This one explains our different kinds of stone and stone walls and has photos of many, all over New England. He has an interesting/amusing collection of walls to visit. Inexpensive gift for any New Englander or a good read thru the library.

What a great suggestion, Ginny12. I'm going to get a copy.

Another book by the author that I'd recommend is:

Stone by Stone : The Magnificent History in New England's Stone Walls (Paperback) by Robert Thorson

I got this for my dad for a gift. My dad has been pointing out stone walls to me since I was a kid long before people even noticed them. So he thoroughly enjoyed this book as well.

Sue

I love all the stone walls in New England. I do the same thing as everyone else. I edge my beds with the larger rocks and use the smaller ones to help with run off. I am on a corner lot with one of the roads being dirt. When a large rock surfaces, I'm right there to grab it for my stone edging.

This past summer I did a no-no, I took a rock from a beach on Cape Breton. Actually, I have added rocks from all over. It started years ago as a child when my grandmother gave me smaller rocks from many of the Great Lakes. I kept them in boxes and moved them around the country with me (I know that is stupid, but now I'm glad I did). My grandmother died over 40 years ago, but I have those rocks in my current garden.

hostas,
Don't feel bad about your single purloined rock. I naively (should have known better but didn't) came home with a car full of beach rocks from various shores when I bought my house many years ago. My friends told me I was lucky I didn't get "hard time on the rock-breakin' chain gang" for pulling that "heist." I was clueless! After that, I stuck with buying river rocks from legit stoneyards.

For stone wall fans, two interesting talks at Blithewold:

Walking Tour of BlithewoldÂs Stones and Stone Walls
Saturday, May 6, 11:30 - 12:30

Dr. Robert Thorson, geology professor at the Unversity of CT and author of Stone by Stone, leads us on an outdoor walk through Blithewold, interpreting the stones and stone walls of the property: their age, how they were worked, how to "read" the landscape by studying a wall, and more. WeÂll also look at the stones on the mansion to discover their story. $10 Members, $12 Non-members

DESIGN AND GARDENING CLASSES
Stone Walls of New England
Saturday, May 6, 10:00 - 11:00 am

Stone walls are a defining element throughout New EnglandÂs landscapes and by preserving them, we are preserving our own cultural heritage. Dr. Robert Thorson, geology professor at Uconn and author of Stone by Stone, helps us to develop a new appreciation of these structures by providing an account of their formation. With just a bit of knowledge, one can tell a story of a landscape by observing the surrounding stone walls. Dr. Thorson also mentions some of the special places in New England to see these centuries-old structures and to test your new knowledge. Book signing will follow.

Robert Thorson is professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Connecticut. H e writes a weekly Thursday column for The Hartford Courant, and coordinates the Stone Wall Initiative for the preservation of stone walls, now in the process of being incorporated into Connecticut State Museum of Natural History. He is author of Stone By Stone, a winner of the Connecticut Book Award for non-fiction. His book and work precipitated a curriculum development project (grades K-8) funded by the National Science Foundation. He is also author of Stone Wall Secrets, selected by the Smithsonian Foundation as one of its Notable Books of 1998, and Exploring Stone Walls: A Field Guide to New EnglandÂs Stone Walls.
$10 Members, $12 Non-members

Here is a link that might be useful: Blithewold Programs