Landscaping Rocks Blog

Stone Haven is not only renowned for the range of natural stone products we carry, but in the way we present their potential to customers through landscape displays. We have always believed that a stone retailer should do more than make stone available to sale. Truly qualified stone professionals demonstrate their expertise by showcasing the product at its best. This demonstrates faith in its quality, and enough experience to help retail and wholesale customers alike make the right choices for their projects.

Our natural stone landscape displays begin right at the entrance of the stone yard with a water feature and two stone walls. One wall is a traditional, double faced New England stone wall. The other is a Scottish wall (also double faced) built with New York wall stone. As you proceed to the parking area you’ll see a variety of retaining walls that use various types of wall stone, each designed to show how that stone will look when it’s laid into a retaining wall by skilled hands.

Enjoy our beautiful gardens as you head up to the store. You can’t miss our pergola, built with ten 10-foot columns made from many types of building stone. The pergola provides a beautiful introduction to what natural stone can do for you. In it, we display laid patio stones, stone walls, and even another water feature. The pergola is effectively a small gallery, comfortable and accessible even on rainy days. There’s no need to rush, either, as sitting areas provide a place to rest and take in the craftsmanship.

Moving around to the backyard, you’ll find will find yet another water feature, well-kept gardens and a 4 foot tool retaining wall build to show you a range of natural stone. Regular and irregular stone steps give you a chance to compare and contrast both styles, and imagine how they might look at your site.

Remember, if you have any questions during your visit, please talk to us! Until then, take a look around, because there’s always something new to see at Stone Haven.

Tags: English, Landscaping Rocks, Natural stone, Retaining Walls, natural stone by mike
No Comments »

Homeowners, landscapers and even architects will forget landscaping basics from time to time. It isn’t enough to just be technically proficient laying granite stone and other landscaping rocks, or to only provide a solid set of stone walls. A quality landscaping job needs to look balanced – in other words, its elements need to work together to both look good and make it easy for people to enjoy in a practical sense.

Over my years building stone retaining walls, stone patio features, doing general landscaping and acting as a stone retailer and wholesaler who advises landscapers, I’ve come to appreciate the difference a balanced landscape makes to appearance and usability.

For example, imagine if your driveway goes up to the centre of your property, possibly to end in a roundabout or take a “U” shape in front of the main entrance. On a sizable property, just clustering everything by the entrance makes it look too busy, so you’ll have to landscape either side of the driveway.

If you build up one side with retaining walls surrounding an extensive garden, with stone steps leading up, while leaving the other side with nothing but some trees and driveway-level flower beds your landscape will look imbalanced from the front, both in terms of how developed each side is, and by relative level. Practically speaking, your guests have to cross the driveway to enjoy either open space or get to the garden, which is a nuisance.

If you built up a mix of garden space and open recreational space on either side, you can enjoy both sides and keep traffic over the driveway to a minimum. You don’t need to make both sides exactly the same, but ask yourself this: Do both sides attract my eyes equally? Is there any one location I would never go to because it looks bare or is annoying due to a slope or poor sign lines?

The important thing is the overall view and practical comfort, which should attract you on all sides and blend naturally from any direction, so there’s always something interesting to see, and you don’t feel “blocked” from a particular feature. Take care that a focal point like a trees or stone isn’t so dominating that it causes the imbalance. Sometimes, on particularly “loud” feature is all it takes to throw your landscape off kilter.

Come up to out landscaping stone showroom and talk to us. We can advise you how different varieties of landscaping stone can help you provide balance to your property through properly placed stone walls, flagstone steps and patios, and more. We have the experience on staff to answer your questions and look forward to hearing from you.

Tags: English, Flagstones, Granite Stone, Landscaping Rocks, Retaining Walls by mike
No Comments »

As time is such a valued commodity nowadays, a low maintenance property lets you be creative and enjoy the property without devoting the long hours you need for work and family. That’s why low maintenance landscaping is not only a practical choice for institutions and property management firms but also individuals who want a beautiful landscape, but aren’t sure of their ability to make a time or financial commitment.

Once completed, you can take care of a low maintenance landscape for a fraction of the time required for its high maintenance counterpart. The disadvantage is that a low maintenance property can rarely match the spectacular features of a harder to maintain properties.

Still, you can get a lot out of a little effort by sticking to a design philosophy of elegant simplicity. This gives you low maintenance property gardens, but only at key locations where they’ll have maximum visual impact. Even the most labour intensive property can end up looking gaudy and overdone compared to a low maintenance landscape with correct composition and a solid construction/

Use landscaping stones such as sandstone and granite stone as tough decorative elements. If you choose the right variety from a stone retailer it can serve as its own decoration above and beyond any gardens or the other soft landscaping features it supports.

Stone retaining walls along with other practical or decorative stone walls are great additions to a landscaped property. Retaining walls let you reshape the property to be less prone to serious erosion, and if you choose the right landscaping stone (such as sandstone, limestone or granite) your walls, if properly built, should work perfectly without demanding maintenance for several years.

Lawns that have a rolling appearance also add interest to a property, and can be used to better control drainage than a flat grassy area. The key is to combine practical and visual goals, and try to do a little perfectly, instead of doing too much with too little money and materials.

Tags: English, Granite Stone, Landscaping Rocks, Retaining Walls, Sand Stone by mike
1 Comment »