Landscaping Rocks Blog

Limestone has a long history as a building material for both indoors and outdoors projects. It’s easy to cut and work but it’s still strong, so people have used it for roads, paths and even entire buildings for thousands of years. Kingston, Ontario was once nicknamed “Limestone City” due to its preponderance of limestone buildings.

Nowadays, thanks to the rise of tough, lightweight materials like steel, limestone is considered too heavy for entire buildings but the properties that made it the stone of choice for past builders make it ideal for modern landscapers. The secret of limestone’s utility is its composition. Limestone is a sedimentary rock that’s largely composed of the material calcite: the same tough material that sea creatures use to make their shells. Limestone is made of large, round grains of calcite bonded by other sedimentary materials. The exact composition is responsible for a given limestone’s color.

Thanks to its natural properties limestone can be cut and polished to nearly any shape. You can get it in the form of rough, tumbled stones for decorative cairns and water fountains or in smooth, interlocking tiles. Naturally, you have far more choices than rough or smooth. One of the great things about limestone is that you can cut smooth edges on one face of a stone but leave a natural exterior on the other without affecting its strength or color.

Consider limestone for flagstones, tiling, exterior cladding, water features and anything else where a tough stone is mandatory. Visit our landscape showroom or call us for examples. Until then, take a look at the way rough and fine-cut textures combine in these Ontario Limestone tiles:

Tags: English, Landscaping Rocks, Uncategorized by mike
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Penn Blue Sandstone is one of the most versatile forms of landscaping rock due to its color and physical properties. It’s a form of sandstone, so it cleanly cuts into many different shapes, allowing it to fill the same role as concrete pavers, but with considerably more elegance and a distinct natural feel.

Once Penn Blue comes out of the ground it can be bought in a variety of regular and irregular shapes, including what we offer in our landscape showroom. Landscapers most often pick rectangular pavers for roles such as the surface around a swimming pool or an inset path to the front or back doors of a house. Penn Blue is ideal for these roles for two reasons. First of all, people enjoy the blue-grey color that gives the sandstone its name. Secondly, while it cuts quite smooth, as a sandstone it still has the granulated texture that, while practically invisible to the naked eye, is enough to give anyone walking on it traction even in wet weather. (This is a reason why it’s an excellent material for the areas around swimming pools.)

You can also use thick Penn Blue pavers for purely decorative purposes. Stacking a few large pavers to create a vertical element in your landscape like a rock pile or (assuming you have the expertise) a wall makes a dramatic statement that breaks up a flat yard.

When you use Penn Blue, remember that it’s a natural, quarried material. That means there’s no “factory standard.” While we only stock high quality landscaping rocks of this (or any other) type, every paver has a different color, based on how it’s been shaped by natural processes. Don’t try to find perfectly matching Penn Blue pavers, but understand that different shades and tones work together, creating a rustic natural look instead, of the bland but consistent colors of artificial solutions.

In fact, we suggest that you play up the natural qualities of Penn Blue Sandstone in your landscaping designs. See how a rough, rustic look would benefit the space by using tabled rocks and irregular pavers. Tumbled rocks have rough edges. Just as you might guess, irregular pavers don’t interlock closely because each one has a unique outline. Try fitting them together like puzzle pieces over a path with room for sand and earth between the landscaping rocks.

Like we said, come to our landscape showroom to see more, or contact us today with your questions.

Tags: English, Landscaping Rocks, Sand Stone, Uncategorized by mike
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