Chapter 8
Choosing Stone and Hard Materials
Choose a Family of Stone and Hard Materials from the Beginning.
It will save alot of problems if you considerately select the set of stone and hard materials you will be using together for your ‘palette’ before you begin to design your projects in any detail.
You are after a sort of family of materials, a set that looks well together. Your early choices may strongly influence the overall appearance of your landscape because the initial selections will often establish the kinds that you will be using in subsequent work for the sake of continuity within your place.
The materials you select will affect the cost, the ground preparation needed, the sequence of the work and the maintenance needed afterwards.
Each particular kind of hardmaterial has a typical shape, color and texture range, and other inherent characteristics which make it suitable for some building applications and not others.
For this reason, for all the different uses you will need to choose multiple kinds of stone and hard materials.
Once you have thought about your necessary applications, you can choose your ‘family’ of specific building materials from those that are well suited to their jobs.
“Devi Guardare Tutto”
= You need to look at (absolutely) everything.
From the advice of Italian Master Mason, Carmelo Messina.
The difference between your options in terms of the quality of appearance may be priceless, so you will want to look around and have an opportunity to choose.
Get the best materials you can afford. Durability is an issue. Materials that seem a bit more expensive may actually be a far better buy because their lifetime in the landscape is a lot longer.
Time goes by quickly in a garden setting, and you won’t want to replace things just when the plant materials are maturing nicely. Or ever, preferably. If you do things right the first time, and quality stone is your medium, the work will last. Sometimes the handsomest and best overall materials may even cost less than alternatives if the source is nearby.
“Oh thou sculptor, painter, poet!
Take this lesson to thy heart:
That is best which lieth nearest;
Shape from that thy works of art.”
Longfellow, Gaspar Becerra
Enduring materials such as wood, stone, concrete, metal, asphalt (and even plastics) that you choose to use are fundamental in establishing an esthetic connectedness for your property.
“Constancy (is) generated
by the repetition of underlying patterns.”
F. L.Wright
Consider the character of the various stone and other materials already in the view.
The chosen set of materials may be more pleasing if it seems an appropriate part of the local landscape in general. If you are choosing between alternative materials, consider how their color and character will work in relation to whatever else is already on your property, in the views or in scenes nearby your home.
There are so very many kinds of fieldstone, each with their own colors and textures, since their appearance depends on which field they come from, and the geological history of that place.
Whatever you choose to bring in should be harmonious with existing elements that you like and are keeping.
If the family of materials you build with originally came out of the same area as you reside in, or from similar geological earth areas, when you build them in they can seem as if they had always been there.
For the purpose at hand, sometimes the material will need to be flat and thin, other times flat and fat. larger three dimensional kinds may suit the purpose better in other contexts.
Be Consistent
If you use the same or a related kind of material for all similar applications throughout your property, that consistency will help create a unified feeling and esthetic within the place.
Horizontal Contexts
The type of Stone or other particular material chosen for horizontal building contexts can be consistently the same kind(s) throughout the property.
Materials with durable flat surfaces will be good choices for the horizontal work that you will create, such as terraces, paths, and treads of steps. You may want to choose the very best and most long lived kinds where the floor is busiest and most visible.
An even sturdier kind of flat material may be needed where cars will drive over it.
Vertical Contexts
You can be equally consistent for vertical applications, but you probably need a different kind of material.….
When the goal is some elevation, as in stone wall work or construction of step risers, raised beds, rock gardens or fire pits, 3 dimensional kinds of hard materials are probably needed. You often need small, medium and large versions of the dimensional kinds of stone you choose. If they come from the same bedrock, they will usually look well together. Size classes roughly like Corn kernels, Marbles, Golf balls, baseballs, and soccer balls each have different jobs.
Stone that Drains away Water
You may need a small kind allowing good drainage in some areas. Your gravel or crushed stone may be visible in walkways, drives, surface drainage areas, or stone garden mulches. If this small material is taken out of the same geological location as the larger stone you are using, the color set can provide consistency.
“Propriety is a universal test.“
F.A.Waugh, Landscape Gardening
Look around at nearby built work to find out what materials may suit your local esthetic and be available to you.
A particular vernacular visual character is established by the kinds and colors of materials that have been commonly used in your area over a long span of time. Often this is because they have been available close by. Their character is part of your biogeographical destiny, an intrinsic part of the ecoesthetic nature of your place. There are choices that are a natural part of the local palette.
“Do experiments with the materials at hand
to find out what you can do
with what is locally available…
so that people can do gardens beautifully in that area.”
Mien Ruys / Dedemsvaart, Netherlands
What is beautiful in your eyes and locally available can help you determine the range of good choices for your projects. Go see nearby stone and hard materials suppliers, quarries and maybe even excavation and blasting projects that might be sources for you.
To find suitable matching material, it will be important to travel with a few photos and physical samples of stone and materials in your car. These will speak volumes to knowledgeable masons, or the masonry and stone suppliers. Color and character are hard to describe in words.
Truly local materials may or may not be available, so if what will be used must be brought in from other areas, your job may be to locate the best match for that typical local material. This will be especially important if you want to blend with some already in your home surroundings.
Keep Track of Your Sources.
Try to get kinds of stone and other hard materials that you will be able to get again, as this will be important for your future projects. Many of the most beautiful landscapes are made over some years. If you have found a source for any wonderful material, this may be treasure for your place down the lines of time.
Keep track of where each of your chosen kinds came from, and find out how to request those particular types again. When you are engaged in making a landscape, you will be needing matching materials later, more likely than not.
Keep Track of Your Recipes.
For stone constructs with visible cement or mortar joints, or if you mix stucco, the components of the mix matter for the outcome color. There are different mixes and various proportions used by different masons and this can affect the color.
You will want to use the same recipes as are established on your property, so ask your builder or your sources how to specify them in future.If you make notes for your files at the time of the work, it saves a lot of time and trouble later, just as it does in your home when it is time for touchups and you kept track of the specific paint colors you used.
Asphalt can have different textures and colors depending on the size and color and the proportions of the sand and stone embedded in the matrix. The color of the bedrock that the small stone came from will determine the overall hue.
..
Nearby here, we see driveways with a decidedly purple caste due to the color of the bedrock in Saugus, Massachusetts. Elsewhere we see the range of tans and greys typical of the Cape Ann gravels embedded.
Thus even when sourced locally, driveways made from materials from different quarries can have very different appearances, so where your contractor buys his asphalt, crushed stone or peastone matters. If later you need to add or patch with something resembling what you already have, it will be infinitely easier to succeed if you noted down the original source.
Keep track of your Artisans.
The hand of the particular mason or builder can be very important to the character of each built project, and to the appearance of the property overall. Consistency is most easily accomplished if you begin with an artisan whose work you love, and can who can probably come back over time for subsequent similar projects.
If this is not possible, for continuity in your place, choose someone who can build in the established style. There are many kinds of masons. The ones you need will depend upon what type of masonry work you will be doing. Best to visit their work.
Lyrical…A connected composition
with some repeating portions
wherein a person is led on a journey
by repeating or related parts….
* A gravel or peastone path is not all gravel. The peastone needs to be underlain and prepared with the right base materials to be solid enough for walking comfortably.
** Be careful of what you buy as peastone. You will want to check the source pile since some distributors of ‘peastone’ blend in crushed stone of the same size with the gravel, making the product less desirable for garden uses.
ELLEN COOL
STONE GARDEN DESIGNS INC.
stonegardendesignsinc@gmail.com
A Reasoned Landscape.com
Landscape Composition.
Stonework and Garden Design.
Unusual Plant Materials, Troughs
Tools and Antique Garden Ornaments
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