Replaced Some Lawn With a Rock Garden

The first step in this process is to remove the sod. I started along the wood fence line and that sod came up in nice LONG strips; so long that I decided to roll the pieces. How cute do they look?! Since I didn't want to carry them far once it was time to load them into the truck, I piled them along the vinyl fence laying them on top of the brown grass.

Although there are sod cutters for this activity, for some reason, I choose to do it by hand. And by hand, I mean on my hands and knees using a kneeling pad, garden shovel and a little garden rake. It is a workout for sure but oddly satisfying.

When all the sod was pulled up along the house, I set the edging bricks in place. I just love these bricks! They are called Bullet edgers and were on sell for $1.19 each. I ended up buying 64 for this project. 

Next, I removed the sod along the vinyl fence and sat the edgers in place as I worked. The spot beneath the rolls of sod would have to wait until I loaded them in the truck.

Before heading to Rockhound to get the landscape rock, I needed to load up the truck and just like the last two times I removed sod from our yard and take this new batch to a friend's property.  It seemed like a good idea to roll the sod, but the rolls were a bit heavier than the 1'-2' squares that were in the last two batches. When I got to Linda's, she and I unloaded the truck and arranged the sod pieces into a nice grass quilt.

Before filling the space with rock, to help prevent weeds & grass from growing up through the rock, I laid down newspaper over the soil. I had used newspaper in another section of the front yard this summer until I ran out and then used landscape cloth for the remainder of that section. Both methods have worked well, there are a few volunteer pansies that have grown through them but fewer have come up where I have the newspaper. When using newspaper, be sure to wet it well before covering it with soil or rock. I find this technique also helps keep it in place since it's usually windy when I'm working on these outdoor projects.

We have a Tacoma so I can only get 1/2 yard of rock at a time. 1/2 yard of landscape rock is $16.50. I figured it would take 3 loads and, yes, it took 3. Since I couldn't back the truck right up to the area where I was using the rock, to move it from the truck to the garden beds, I used the garden shovel to fill up my little wagon, pulled the wagon to the bed and used the shovel to unload the rock and place in the beds. Building a rock garden provides lots of free exercise!

I ran out of newspaper 1/2 way through the 2nd section of the rock garden and decided to use some brown paper grocery bags since I already had them on hand. It'll be interesting to see how well they work compared to the newspaper and landscape cloth.

Well, I also ran out of grocery bags before finishing the rock garden so I used landscape cloth. I still had some on hand so no new $ was spend on any of the weed growth prevention

When all the rock was in place, I sealed it with Homax concrete sealer. I had a lot left over from the landscape projects in the front of the house so I figured I'd use it to add some shine to the rock.

The rock garden by the house looks really nice. I do plan to build something, probably out of lattice, to cover the utility boxes. I've always thought they looked tacky but now I notice them even more.

I'm so happy I don't have to mow next to the vinyl fence any longer. I had to be so careful not to bump up against it since it was easy to damage the area where the sections were attached to each other. I'll still need to do a little edging along the bricks to keep the grass from growing right up to them but I have an electric edger that works well for that process.

in addition to getting rid of that dry spot in the grass -- we had tried many times to revive it - having a rock garden is more economical since we won't be watering it

Don't these rock gardens look nice? I may add some flower pots for color but since it's getting late in the season, that'll be a project for next Spring/Summer.

I had all the tools, weed prevention, sealer on hand so I only bought the edging bricks & landscape rock. The total cost was $135

When I bought the sealer, it was $50 for a gallon (it goes a long way).

The landscape cloth was $10 for the roll

Instructions

• Measure the size of the area where you are removing sod
• Mark with a line or garden hose or use a yardstick
• Using a garden shovel, cut through the soil along the line for the new area
• Pull up the sod and set aside

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• You can use the shovel to loosen the sod or a small garden rake
• Use edging bricks to line the new area
• Lay down either newspaper, brown paper bags or landscape cloth
• Cover with landscape rock to the depth you want - 2-3"
• Apply two light coats of sealer  *Optional*

For Mother's Day this year, my oldest son gave me 3 Azalea plants. Since this variety grows to a size of 3-4' wide and 4-5' tall, I thought this was the perfect spot to plant two of them!

So far, these little plants are growing very well!