Hi there, these leaf print stepping stone are large 3'x3 1/2'x3". i nailed flywood and four 2x4 together like a shalow sand box, put leaf(i use elaphant ears variety) upside down. mix concrete and pure on the leaf and let it spread out till it cover the tray( sadnwich chicken wire in the midle to help support.) let it dry for two day then gently flip the tray over and the thing just fall right off. the leaf will dry out peal off in a day or two. hytuffa forum is the place to learn more about this sort of project, best of luck. tuanh

Debris will still blow in or wash in with rains - regardless of whether you lay down the mat or not - and it does accumulate, and provides a growing substrate for any type of seeds that also blow, wash, or fall into the area. Maintenance/clean out will still be on the agenda. You can save yourself some money by initially using a weed killer (or outright plant killer) of some sort such as Round-Up (not sure if this is available in NZ but surely there's something available) first - and then covering the area(s) where you intend to set stones down with wettened layers of old newspaper. Layers of wettened newspaper will be just as effective and have the added benefit that, unlike "landscaping fabric" (and other names it goes by), when stuff does try to grow up through it and on top of it (it still will with landscaping fabric, debris and seeds aren't biased one way or the other), you can actually tend to the newspaper much easier than landscaping fabric. You can also use old cardboard (like boxes broken down flat and soaked with water). There's a blueberry "patch" on my property (was put in by previous owners) and they religiously used "landscaping fabric" around all of the bushes. Now what I have to contend with is yards and yards of landscaping fabric with debris that has collected on top of it - become a prime growing environment not only for grass/weeds, but also has "stuff" growing up through it. Unlike newspaper or cardboard - the landscaping fabric is VERY time-consuming and labour-demanding to try and pull up/free and I have to CUT it in little (tiny/very small) sections as I get it to turn loose. If they had used newspaper or cardboard (even if they allowed all of the debris to remain on top of it), then I could just kill the "stuff" off with a spray and re-layer it with newspaper/cardboard or I could at least till it under and start from scratch. The landscaping fabric can't be tilled - it gets tangled in the tines, screws up the tiller, and is just a hair-pulling personified Frustration that makes one want to scream. Newspaper and/or cardboard wettened and laid down before your stones go in, will be much less work-intensive in the longrun and definitely cheaper. I spend no small amount of my volunteer gardening/landscaping time for other people's yards/landscapes/gardens, trying to rip out landscaping fabric and tarps and heavy, non-degrading plastic that 5 or more years beforehand they were told was exactly what they needed to lay down before they put in stones, pebbles, etc. I have yet to encounter anyone who has used such who "down the road" (whether a few years or a decade or more) didn't end up wholly regretting the choice/decision and the expense, which in retrospect they found to be a complete waste of their money. Me, I've ingrained it in my memory so as to learn by their mistakes. I've seen (and have had to contend with the aftermath) of the same mistake being made by people using old full pieces or scraps of linoleum and other similar "floor coverings" in their efforts to prevent weeds and grass from coming up in landscaped areas. The only advantage I have found to the linoleum is that it tends to tear less/get fewer holes for things to grow up through and when it is laden on top with accumulated debris, if I can get a good hold on it with the right equipment and attach to a vehicle or tractor or have several extra pairs of hands/arms, it can be pulled/tugged loose and out a fair bit easier than landscaping fabric that has its days numbered. So, aside from going with biodegradable paper products that you can recycle/reuse in landscaping, the next thing to remember is perpetual maintenance to clean out debris regularly to slow down eventual accumulation. You can still use plant/weed-killing sprays over rocks and in between them as well - and unlike resistant landscaping fabrics and plastics, that spray can soak down through paper-based material to continue to inhibit growth underneath the layers beneath the stones. Oh, and paper-based reused material also "breathes" better - and you have less issue with moisture-retention or build-up underneath - something definitely to be taken into consideration if you are working around the foundations of a home, outbuildings, etc. You don't want more moisture trapped and "driven" towards the edges to escape right around the foundation of such buildings. The paper-based reused materials also make it conducive if you decide that you want to clear a little circle and dig down to put in a specimen plant or plants amongst the stones - such as cacti, succulents, and other "rock garden" conducive plants. Trying to cut through already laid landscaping fabric is a PITA! and rain would also run towards such openings and could end up flooding out future plants and causing them to rot. Hope this saves you some effort and money... best wishes for your gardening - I am semi-ignorantly envious of your locale (in other words, I've never been to NZ and don't know the climate[s] of NZ firsthand, but from what I've seen... *drool* ya know?) and gardening possibilities!

The thread seems to be getting away from what we might better be discussing. There can obviously be different opinions about the price of stone & what's reasonable. I think that what people want to know, as a start, is where there are good sources of stone. If you happen to live in the Vancouver area, the following extract from the article in the summer 1970 issue of Davidsonia magazine about the Nitobe Memorial Garden is, I think, interesting - "Stones for the Garden were selected from various sections of the Lower Mainland: large and small, colorful rocks from near Harrison Lake for the waterfall and stream, stones with character from Britannia Beach for the Tea Garden and local boulders for the margin of the lake. Professor Mori explained his stone work in a letter to the author written a few days before his untimely death, after returning to Japan: In the Japanese Garden at U.B.C. - " I was most interested in arranging the rocks. I tried a bold treatment with such monotonous stones as used around the lake, doing my best to arrange them with some freshness. I used my own method of arranging the somewhat colorful stones at the waterfall and streams, hoping that people who see them will understand that some aspect of polychrome can be found in a Japanese Garden. In the Tea Garden I used the river rocks which we brought down from Britannia Beach. They are too light and dry now, but after the trees in this part of the garden grow to some size, the rocks will improve in appearance. I will be delighted if the beauty of the Garden is understood gradually by the people who see it.""

For a couple of years I had a garden spot away from my house, with no water supply available so if I wanted to supplement rainfall I had to haul gallon jugs of water. To make my watering efficient, when I planted my peppers & tomatoes in the spring, I dug down and buried empty gallon plastic jugs, one between each plant. I had poked 4-5 holes in the bottom of each, of course, and left the caps on until later in the summer. Once the weather warmed, and after a good soaking rain, I mulched the beds 4-6" deep with chopped leaves, being sure to cover the tops of the (so far empty and still capped) bottles to protect them from the sun since I had found that the plastic degrades and becomes brittle when exposed to the sun. (In previous years, just cultivating around the bottles inevitably resulted in my breaking the tops off by midsummer.) When the weather reached a point where I actually needed to water, I cleared the mulch away for the moment and poured a gallon of water into each buried bottle. I set the cap loosely back atop each bottle to keep the leaf debris from falling in and clogging the exit holes in the bottom, then pulled the mulch back up to protect the plastic. I did not care about how long it took for the bottle to empty-- it seemed like a gallon or two a week per plant was sufficient, and the best part is that by burying the bottles the water went right down to the root zone where it was most effective. As for using wall-o-waters, since I had gotten some free from a friend, I tried them last year with 3 really early tomato plants I started specifically to experiment with. While they survived a good bit of frosty weather, in the end the plants I had started weeks later and planted out a month after the first ones when the weather had warmed quickly caught up to the wall-o-water ones and all the tomatoes pretty much bloomed & set fruit at the same time & rate. So my conclusion is that it was satisfying to my eager gardener's soul to be out planting early, but it really made no difference in overall plant performance. I have found the same to be true with early plantings of such things as peas and salad crops, too. Early plantings may survive, but later plantings quickly catch up and may even surpass earlier ones that have been stressed by the weather.