i've used mexican pebble rock and other similar rocks you're considering. The downside is they look messy when leaves or other garden debris settle on the rocks. It's very hard to keep neat looking.

post a picture of your beds

Beth,

Well my beds are lousy from lack of care at the moment so it's kind of embarrassing to take a photo. I used to have black mulch where I plan to put the rocks or gravel and it looked great, but i'm tired of it disappearing every year. You make a good point about debris getting in there. I was thinking of taking the blower and blowing it out, but I think it would blow the pebbles too. Maybe I should get bigger rocks like 3/4" or 1" so that they stay put when blown.

What color are yours? How long have you had? Did the color fade?

If these are planted beds, some plants find particularly dark or light rocks stressful. The white will reflect a lot of extra light, and may discolor over time from organic materials or your soil pigments. I also don’t really enjoy the extreme contrast provided by white rock in a garden. The black will get hot in sun just like asphalt does.

It is also a real pain to weed beds mulched with rock, and in many settings rock mixes with the soil, far worse than topcoarting beds with shredded organic mulch like you had previously.

well,,,this is what I had for quite awhile (this if from 15 years ago,,the pond has since been redone!)

if you get a mix of the grays, the color stays pretty even.

a few years ago I redid some of it to look like this

the flower beds got the mulch. but honestly, with all of the crap falling and blowing, it doesn't stay like this. if you have a small area, you can keep up with it.

they have all sorts of mixtures. visit a place that specializes in landscape stone for the best prices.

I've also used landscape glass. with constant dirt and hard water, it does get a little dull looking. this spot is always in the shade so it's not too bad

The larger mexican pebbles would be the easiest.

Organic mulch as the finished product requires top dressing with more mulch annually. A better strategy it to have groundcovers that grow together and require no more mulch beyond the initial installation (before plants grow together.)

It's just that in the areas that touch the house, I'm choosing to avoid mulch. It turns into soil eventually and over time it raises the grade if I keep adding it year after year. I'm trying to maintain a distance from where wood on house starts to grade because of potential termite problems. I'd rather use mulch away from house.

With the rocks I was planning to put underlayment down to avoid weeds and blow the dirt out once in a while.

So white rocks discolor? What about the black ones? With the heating up issue with the black rocks, I was thinking it cant be any worse than black mulch, no? Or black soil for that matter, no?

Regardless of whether you use a mulch product like bark or a living mulch of plants, both are far preferable and easier to maintain than any kind of rock mulch.

And whether or not one is better than the other is really a matter of personal taste....both have their pros and cons.

I grew up in a home with a 3' river rock perimiter around most of the home with a shrub hedge in front of the river rock. We spent half the summer every summer cleaning out sections of river rock. (3500 sf ranch home).

I have a 1' boarder of black river rock around my bilco doors and don't want any more river rock.

The black does not stay black. It is a dark gray.

No rubber mulch. It smells bad when it gets hot and will break down at some point, adding rubber dust and various other materials of questionable safety to the soil and air and water. And then it needs to be disposed of . . .

I wouldn't use rocks in a flower bed either for all the reasons stated above. Now if you have an area where you cannot grow anything because of poor soil and lighting conditions, then a rock surface would work. I am on Long Island as well, and have a small area on the north side of my garage between it and my neighbor's property line. It would be very difficult to grow and take care of plants in that area, so my landscaper filled it with small white/gray/beige "beach pebbles." It's a nice look and works well for an area with no plants, where I keep my garbage pails.

I also have beach pebbles in my driveway--it gives a nice casual/rustic look instead of blacktop. And I also have gray gravel in the small areas around the barbeque grill and pool equipment. You can get them at any nursery on LI.

If you are worried about your siding, this was our solution.

Th stones will darken to a reddish brown, and once the shrubs and mulch are in you will not see the the blocks. If you do not put edging between the planting bed the stone and mulch will eventually mix and look messy. Here in New England it is hard to get and keep vinyl edging in the ground,

you're not talking about the white marble chips are you?

I have beach pebbles also ( I think 3/4” ), in a variegated beige, off, white, other natural colors. No issues with either weeds ( have a permeable weed fabric below ) or discoloration. Like Karen , my landscaping is contemporary. Looks very clean & understated.

Very pretty and I like your use of a variety of stone. That makes it even more interesting. You probably also don't have much tree and leaf debris. That is what gets into rock/stones and creates its own environment for growth on top of the permeable or any other type weed barrier, and weeds sprout in that medium. Just the way it is. Nature keeps reproducing no matter what we want! lol

I have an area with river rock and it is a pain in the as*. I'm actually going to scrape it all off because it's not easy to get all the leaves and crap out. A leaf blower doesn't get it all, and the rocks blow all over. If I lived in Florida it would be so much easier, but I'm in the North.