Granite is an exclusive, expensive, elegant and welcome material in any beautiful garden. Most of those who invest in a garden are leaving the use of it because of the price, deciding to finish the driveways, walkways, terraces with popular concrete blocks. For sale directly from the manufacturer, however, you can buy cheap granite off cuts, which can be used in many ways in the home garden.
Granite in garden architecture
Stone as a natural material creates great creative possibilities for owners of various types of gardens. A wide range of stone products can be used here. In gardens, granite can be used in its various forms, from regular cubes, slabs, which can be used as a lining for paths to fine grit, which can be used to create decorative elements in the garden. An appropriate choice of colours is very important for the compositions created, the combination of different shades in regular forms can add flavour to our finishes.
Granite terrace
The terrace surface is usually made of stone cobblestones or cut stone slabs. When laying it, keep a slope of 1-2% towards the garden. After laying the surface, the gaps between stone blocks are filled with sand and large, flat, irregular stones are usually stabilized with cement mortar. When choosing granite for a terrace surface, we can be sure that it will be very hard and resistant to abrasion.
Granite paths in the garden
Stone paths in the garden have a reputation for being quite expensive. However, they do not have to be very expensive at all, if only we give up stone cubes and decide on fragments of granite slabs, which are waste from the production of kitchen worktops or window sills. The paths made of them may look very attractive on our plot, unless we have decided to give the style of French palace gardens to the surroundings of our house.
Granite walls
Stone walls perfectly diversify the garden space, allowing to use it in a spectacular way. We usually build stone walls in the garden when we want to fence the area, divide the garden interior or – when the fall of the area causes soil erosion or landslide – maintain the mass of soil. We can also build a wall so as to cut off a fragment of the slope, which will allow it to shorten and better use the space.
Stone walls fit perfectly with plants, giving a special character to plant beds. They can be used to create impressive raised beds and plant not only the crowns of such walls, but also their vertical planes.
Stone fireplace
A place for a bonfire should match the style of the house and the rest of the garden. They can be raised above the priming level or plunged into a hardened surface, e.g. granite cubes, broken stone or gravel. The fireplace can also be planted with shrubs or hurdles, thus gaining aesthetic value.
Where to get the granite off cuts?
Stone waste can be found in building depots and it is worth to drive around the area to check it out, because it is often not an assortment that they boast about in their offer. Of course, the Internet is irreplaceable in such a search.
It is also worth checking with manufacturers of kitchen worktops and windowsills made of granite and other durable stones; maybe they will have to give up at an affordable price pieces of stone slabs, which they no longer need, and which may be useful to us.
Definitely, however, you should refrain from looking for sandstones, let alone marbles; if you use them to make paths, soon the slabs will turn into moving pieces of not very durable rubble.
