Replacing Grass Lawn With Gravel
Hello, I’m looking for advice on anyone who has installed gravel in their backyard and has lived with it for a while.
We have a medium size backyard with a patch of grass that’s approximately 20‘ x 30‘. We are redesigning and thinking about getting rid of the grass and putting a fire pit out there. The reason we don’t want grass is because we live in California and we are always working against “drought“ conditions.
To the right of the fire pit we are going to install a 15’ x 30‘ pergola for an outdoor kitchen and seating area. I have been advised by an arborist not to use concrete as a foundation for the pergola because there are 2 mature redwood trees nearby and he said concrete will suffocate the roots. So, again. we were thinking about doing the same gravel in the pergola area where we would have a table and some lounge seating.
As part of our renovation, we are also going to convert a bank of three windows on the south wall of our house into a 15‘ x 9‘ sliding glass wall system. This would be to access the fire pit and outdoor kitchen. The floor of my family room and kitchen is tiled with limestone (which is fairly soft as far as natural stone goes). The rest of my house is wood flooring. I’m concerned that people will track the gravel in on the bottom of their shoes and possibly end up scratching up my floors over time. Just curious if this is a thing?
Have any of you installed gravel in your backyard and loved it or hated it?
(Attaching a couple of inspiration pictures I found on Houzz that would be similar to what we’re thinking about doing in our backyard.)
Comments (9)
3 months agoWe have gravel/rock mulch in the front and back yards of our present and previous house and love it! That said there are different kinds and your success will be dependent on choosing the right one.
If by gravel you mean pea gravel with rounded edges it moves a lot when walked on so would take raking to keep it even. crushed gravel has sharp edges that lock together better.
We have smaller crushed gravel around our firepit and a size up around plants with some big chunk in a few areas for added interest. As a base for frequently used chairs that will be moved a lot packed down DG or fines would be best. We used it for paths in our previous house and didn't notice damage to floors but did have a concrete porch and door mat. Bigger stones don't get caught in shoes but are harder to walk on.
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Southwestern Landscape · More InfoI detest grass and never want to have to deal with it again. This isn't my house but looks very much like it.
Sigrid