Creating A Lush and Welcoming Landscape

Planting beds have many benefits. The obvious one is you get to create a beautiful or useful garden in the bed. Indeed, a raised planting bed makes tending your plants easier because you don't have to bend as far over. A planting bed can also be an attractive addition to another hardscaping element such as a patio.

Stone makes for a very attractive raised planting bed not least because you have so many design options. Find out some attractive planting bed ideas to have a hardscape contractor put into your yard.

Rough-Hewn Stone Ideas 

Hardscape contractors can use rugged stones with rough-hewn edges to build a planting bed. In some cases, the stones are rough but regular in shape. So, they can lay them like bricks to make a neat bed that's rough around the edges. You commonly see this style of planting bed either rounded or with straight edges.

The contractors can also use stones that don't fit together quite as neatly. They may vary in size and shape with only a few straight edges — or no edges at all. The hardscape contractors have to employ a lot of skill to stack these stones with minimal mortar so the bed stays erect. However, the effect is a charmingly rustic bed you might expect to find in an old cottage garden.

Stacked Stone Ideas

Similarly, stacking stones without mortar is a long-revered art form. In modern hardscaping, the contractors typically use flat stones that might only be a couple of inches tall. They use these stones in methods similar to the above ideas, but with no mortar at all. Depending on how regular the stones are, the effect can be neat or rustic. You often get more variegation of color with this style.

An even more ambitious method of dry stacking has the contractors using naturalistic stones with few straight edges. These stones often come from the river, so they're smooth and round. The stacking skill needed for such a bed is significant, but you'll end up with a unique planting bed.

Mortared Stone Ideas

Once you add mortar to the construction of the planting bed, the result is more formal. The style comes from the way they lay the stones. For example, they can lay the stones in a series of random squares and rectangles. The result adds a pleasing geometry to your planting bed.

A classic pattern utilizes flagstones. The stones are less regular than with the above pattern. What's more, they show a lot of color variance. Flagstones are relatively easy to work with, though, so the contractors can fit them together and create a formal planting bed.

Consider hiring a hardscape contractor to install one of the above stone planting beds.