How to Make a Flower Bed into a Rock Garden

If you are tired of your flower bed’s pine straw or wood chips blowing and washing away, or just want a different look to your home’s landscaping, creating a rock garden out of a current flower bed may be the perfect solution. Having rocks as your garden’s base will add character to your yard and allow you to be creative with your choices without having to work as hard to maintain your outdoor area. Taking a weekend to create a rock garden in your yard could add value to your home and create a nice view for you and your neighbors.

Things You'll Need

• Rake
• Shovel/hoe (optional)
• Wheelbarrow
• Heavy-duty trash bags
• Landscape fabric/weed barrier
• Stakes
• Decorative bricks or stones (optional)
• Flowers or shrubbery (optional)
• Other decorative features (optional)
• Rocks

Instructions

1. Plan your future rock garden in your head or on paper. Choose the types of rocks, greenery and decorative brick or stone border you want in your garden, and measure the space to make sure you get an adequate amount of materials.

2. Clean out your current flower bed. Rake out most or all of the pine straw, wood chips or whatever currently makes up your flower bed. You can clean around any greenery you plan to use in the rock garden. Use a shovel or hoe to dig out any debris or weeds if necessary—you can either take them to a compost pile with a wheelbarrow or throw out any unneeded material.

3. Plant any new greenery you want in your rock garden. Most shrubbery will be low-maintenance, but you can add flower bushes and most other flowers to the landscaping as well. Add any other decorative features, such as bird feeders and globes, at this point, too.

4. Prevent weeds from growing in your rock garden by putting down a landscape fabric or weed barrier. Overlap the fabric in small areas to prevent weeds from creeping up through the seams, and tack the fabric down with small stakes to hold it in place.

5. Lay your border rocks or stones around the exterior of the garden, if you choose to do so. This can help prevent small rocks to wash away, or could add more details to the rock garden.

6. Arrange the rocks. You can simply pour the rocks in the garden area--or, if you want to be more creative, you may choose to arrange the rocks in a certain order or style. Cover the ground with at least one layer of the group with rocks—you may choose to pour the rocks 2" or more deep.

Tips & Warnings

• Rocks of different styles and sizes are available at most garden stores and retail chains—river rocks and pebbles, lava rock and black sea stone—so choose the one that fits your personality and your home’s appeal. If you choose a border stone, you will want to match it to the rock or any brick or stone on your home.

• You might want to add taller flowers and greenery to your rock garden, since rocks take up more vertical space than most other landscaping material. Short flowers that lie low to the ground could get smashed when you add the rocks to the garden, and may not have enough room to grow later.

• Some rock mixtures you find at home and garden stores may be dirty when you buy them, so rinse them off with a water hose when you get them arranged in the rock garden, to see what they will actually look like.

• Buy more rocks than you think you need. You really can never have too many rocks in the garden, but you can save yourself an extra trip to the store if you buy enough on the first visit. Measure the space properly, and plan for extra materials if you plan to stack the rocks deeper than one layer.

• Be cautious when pouring and arranging rocks—some could have sharp edges that could cut you.