We get this question all the time about sealing or enhancing decorative ground cover rock in order to bring out the vibrant colors and whatnot. While many people do have success, masonry and stone sealers (or whatever you use) will work best on larger profile stone and rock like boulders and flagstones. When it comes to the smaller ground cover rocks like beach pebble, it becomes a bit tedious to evenly cover all the rock. If you spray the area, you will only be covering one side of the stones. You will find that as time goes on, many stones will be kicked/pushed/swept/generally moved and the un-sealed side will show. Just something to consider if you are trying to cover a large area. Looking into polished pebbles might be a good route. Although significantly more expensive than unpolished stone, you would be eliminating the need to purchase, apply, and maintain sealers. Polished pebbles are already looking colorful and shiny. Hope this helps someone out there!

Thanks for the replies. Yep, around here what ain't DG is boulders lying about on the ground. (Aside from these mystery chunks of clay I find - perhaps fill from the developer 30 yrs ago). Some of the hills look like a giant was piling up car sized pebbles. On an earlier 50 ft temporary pathway I just scraped away 2 inches of dirt to make way for the pavers, ran a compactor over the dirt and set the pavers. After five years this "temporary" pathway shows only slight settling (but it does show settling which would be unacceptable in a permanent installation). For this permanent install I wanted to do it by the book. I am pretty confident this existing compressed DG won't move, but I am worried that the compacted aggregate being 4" deep in some spots and only 2" deep in others would give me trouble in the long run.

Hi Beth, I'm getting ready (trying to!) to leave on a trip pretty soon, and also getting ready for the spring swap right now, so I don't have much time to post, but this real quick! When I moved into this house everything that wasn't "grass" was covered with landscape fabric and a "decorative" rock called butter rock! I don't think it had been in for more than a couple years, possibly three, but I'm sure no more than that. In the back yard--where I do 99% of my gardening, there were 3 or 4 struggling perennials in the mass of rock. I've gardened for about 70 years as of right now--gardened "for real" for about 65!--so before I even signed the contract to buy the place I knew the ROCK had to go! And I didn't know the half of it till I started to take it all out. Rock is obviously incredibly heavy--and absolutely impossible to "shovel" once it "settled in." (River rock might be slightly easier, being "rounded.") I dug it out little by little with a hand trowel, putting it in larger black pots, and then putting it, little by little each week, in the dumpster--to keep it from getting too heavy! And I started "piling it up" on one end of the bed 'cause "disposing of it" was taking WAY too long since I wanted to start planting things. But the REAL problem started when I got down to the landscape fabric! As I started to pull the stuff out--a FAR more difficult job than I expected it to be!--I found some of the worst horribly compacted and DEAD soil I have ever seen! Parts of it were badly "discolored" with what I assume was some sort of a fungus/mold, and there were NO earthworms in it--at all! Worms are a sign of healthy soil! The "soil" was mostly heavy clay and that didn't surprise me because they clearly had filled in the area with "whatever was available" when they put it in! And in addition to all of that--I DID find "life" under the stuff! There were HUGE cities of ants that had set up housekeeping under the landscape fabric! Over the last 10 years I've gotten rid of most of them, but there are still a few places where I fight with them every year. By now you can really tell how much I love landscape fabric and ROCK! Eventually I posted FREE rock on FreeCycle and got somebody to come and take the (large!) "pile" I wound up with in the one corner. It was about four years before I finally got the entire bed across the back of my lot free of rock and fabric! As I cleared it out I started planting the cleared areas, so I didn't wait that long to "have a garden!" No way I could afford to "replace" the soil so I started out using cheap bagged "compost." It didn't do much, but maybe helped a little bit. I was surprised to find that some of the perennials did better in the clay than I ever thought they could--but I still don't recommend planting in heavy clay--if you have a choice! The very first year I started a compost pile and now have really Good Stuff to mix in as I'm planting and replanting--and over the years the soil is finally starting to improve enough to be "usable"--and with the introduction of homemade compost the worms are moving back in and increase every year. Another problem with having all the rocks in there is that they eventually get mixed into the soil––even where there's landscape fabric, and it's extremely difficult to "dig" in soil that has rocks in it. Every time you "hit" a rock you have to "move the shovel around" to get "past" it before you can dig in any deeper--so rocks seem to cause all kinds of "problems!" So! If you decide to keep the rock, I guess my best recommendation would be to clear out--as in, remove the rock and fabric--a "fairly large" area in a few places where you want to put perennials or bushes and just plan to not have a "wall to wall" flower bed. For the sunny areas you could put some pretty basic perennials in like Shasta daisies, Black-eyed-Susans, German Iris, Daylilies, or a few other "easy to grow" things. After a few years they'd spread to fill in the entire area where you removed the rock/fabric, so you'd have "color" out there and it wouldn't all just look like "rock!" Think about what you want to do! You have plenty of time to plan it and work on it! You might want to try clearing out one fairly large spot somewhere and plant a few things to "see how it goes" with the dog. Possibly, depending on the dog, you could use some of the "short" garden edging type fence to keep her/him out. Just consider the different possibilities. I use "small bark mulch" but there's also a kind of "shredded" wood mulch you can buy, and I kind of doubt that a dog would want to chew on that stuff too much, so you might try different kinds of things to see if you can find something that works better than rock for you. [But! In the last several years "somebody" has decided that cubing up old tires and calling it MULCH is a good idea! Please, please-please-please don't put any "old tire mulch" in your yard! Decaying/deteriorating rubber would be an even worse thing to have in your soil than rocks--or you could just name your garden the Decaying Petroleum Garden! Ahh! What a fine scent! ;-D] Think about it and take your time in planning and maybe trying some different ideas in some areas. You'll eventually get to what you really want and like! I probably won't be back for a while with any "long" answers--just not gonna have enough time for the next month or so, but there are lots of other folks around here to give you ideas! Skybird EDITED TO ADD: When you start a thread I don't believe you can edit the "topic" at all once it's posted, and I'm pretty sure you can only edit the text of the first post for something like an hour and after that it's "set in stone"--so to speak!!! Replies to the original post can be edited for a month or something like that!

Gregory, in the picture above, the person created a planting bed and then mulched it with gravel instead of wood-based mulch. Typically, planting beds are not created all around the pool. Typically, they are not mulched with gravel. (If you're thinking of it as a great weed preventer, it's not.) There are negatives to choosing gravel over wood based mulch for a planting bed. In essence, you're asking how deep (front to back) should a planting bed be. It depends on what's in it. If you're not going to plant anything in it. it's just a decorative border ... up to you to decide its width according to your criteria.