River Rock Landscaping – Creating a Natural Look

Landscaping with river rock can provide a pleasing, natural look in your backyard. The best part is deciding what you want in your backyard. It’s your backyard and you should have it look exactly how you want it to look.

If you want to build a patio, create a deck for your pool or build retaining walls, you first need to find a source of river rock before any landscaping can be done! This article will provide you with a list of several sources that you can turn to for research on river rock landscaping.

One nice site in particular was Brening’s Rock & Supply at breningsupply.com. Brening’s is a California-based business that serves the Sacramento area. They have river rock for landscaping in a number of varieties, some of which you can view in their Natural Stone Gallery section.

Another good site to visit is the Aquatic Construction website at aquaticconstruction.com. Aquatic Construction has quite a few selections of river rock for landscaping, such as their Colorado River rock and Tennessee River rock in a couple of flavors (including large boulders).

Under their Water Garden Photos section, there are pictures of complete water features with river rock and mature plantings. They’re very useful for getting an idea of what you might want in a pond, waterfall, and/or stream if you’re considering putting a water feature in.

A River Without Water
Let’s say you want to use river rock in your landscaping but don’t want the hassle of water, especially if you have small children around, try creating a dry streambed with your river rock. Instead of water, plant tufted ornamental grasses in your dry streambed and plant flowers like irises along its border for example.

You can also create a dry “river” in your backyard or patio as one homeowner who appeared on HGTV’s Extreme Homes did. Using mainly Mexican beach pebbles, the homeowner created a river-like mosaic that “ran” through the patio. It would be easy to do the same and create something with a similar feel.

For a unique touch to your mosaic, you might try adding blue and green glass to bring in the color of water to your dry river. As you can see, river rock can be used in many different ways. Once you visit some online sites and look at what’s available, you should be able to find something comparable at a local supplier.

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