Decorative and easy to care for - front garden design with grass and gravel

Decorative and easy to care for - front garden design with grass and gravel

The best varieties of gravel for the front yard - tips for choosing

Don't grab the first grit (€ 12.80 at Amazon *) or gravel from the hardware store to make your front yard easy to care for. Careful selection of the right type of gravel paves the way to a tasteful appearance, beyond a dry stone desert. We have put together recommended stone types for a stylish gravel bed for you here:

  • Marble gravel, pure white, the classic for modern and Japanese front garden design
  • Quartz gravel, very beautiful with black and white veined stones for decorative accents
  • Basalt gravel in extra black creates furious contrasts with white marble gravel
  • Rose quartz unfolds an elegant, romantic flair in the country house front garden with its delicate pink tones

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Common grain sizes for decorative gravel are 16/25 to 25/40. By working with different grain sizes within a gravel type, you create a subtle change in the visual effect.

These grasses form a wonderful partnership with gravel

Grasses and gravel stage a front garden, the visual aura of which is reduced to clear shapes without appearing boring. We have selected the most beautiful species from the wide range of ornamental grasses:

  • Blue fescue (Festuca cinerea) with stalks in an impressive steel blue to ice blue; 15-25 cm
  • Blue ray oats (Helictotrichon sempervirens) spreads a Mediterranean flair with yellow spikes over blue stalks; 60 cm
  • Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) with its majestic stature gladly takes on the function of a leading plant; 120-150 cm
  • Mosquito grass (Bouteloua gracilis) enchants with filigree spikes and leaf textures; 20-40 cm

Bearskin fescue (Festuca gautieri 'Pic Carlit') is a prime example of the perfect ornamental grass in the gravel bed. Its hemispherical tufts of grass with pointed, fresh-green stalks unfold in all their glory where sunny, sandy-lean conditions prevail.

Tips

The combination of grass and gravel is not recommended for a front garden on the north side. Due to the cool and humid microclimate, the stones are regularly covered with algae and moss. For shady locations, robust ground cover such as ivy (Hedera helix) or fat man (Pachysandra terminalis) are more suitable than a mulch layer of gravel.