Do you lack time for the complex care of perennials, shrubs and trees? Then you can easily design your front garden with grass and gravel. This guide gives helpful tips on how the combination becomes an aesthetic experience.
How do you design a front garden with grass and gravel?
To make a front garden aesthetic with grasses and gravel, choose suitable types of gravel such as marble gravel or rose quartz and combine them with ornamental grasses such as blue fescue, blue oats or mosquito grass. Make sure there is enough sunlight and avoid shady north sides.
The best types of gravel for the front garden – tips for choosing
Don't just grab the first chippings or gravel you find at the hardware store to make your front garden easy to care for. A careful selection of the right type of gravel paves the way to a tasteful appearance, beyond a dull stone desert. We have put together recommended types of stone for a stylish gravel bed for you here:
- Marble gravel, pure white, the classic for modern and Japanese front garden design
- Quartz gravel, very beautiful with black and white veined stones for decorative accents
- Bas alt gravel in extra black creates furious contrasts with white marble gravel
- Rose quartz with its delicate pink tones creates an elegant, romantic flair in the country house front garden
Common grain sizes for ornamental gravel are 16/25 to 25/40. By working within one type of gravel with different grain sizes, you can create subtle variation in the visual effect.
These grasses form a wonderful partnership with gravel
Grass and gravel create a front garden whose visual aura is reduced to clear shapes without appearing boring. We have selected the most beautiful species from the wide range of ornamental grasses:
- Blue fescue (Festuca cinerea) with stalks in impressive steel blue to ice blue; 15-25cm
- Blue oats (Helictotrichon sempervirens) spread a Mediterranean flair with yellow spike flowers over blue stalks; 60cm
- Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum), with its majestic stature, likes to take on the role of a leading plant; 120-150cm
- Mosquito grass (Bouteloua gracilis) enchants with delicate spike flowers and leaf textures; 20-40cm
A prime example of the perfect ornamental grass in a gravel bed is bearskin fescue (Festuca gautieri 'Pic Carlit'). Its hemispherical grass heads with pointed, fresh green stalks unfold in all their splendor where sunny, sandy, lean conditions prevail.
Tip
The combination of grass and gravel is not recommended for a front garden on the north side. Due to the moist, cool microclimate, the stones are regularly covered with algae and moss. For shady locations, robust ground cover plants such as ivy (Hedera helix) or fat man (Pachysandra terminalis) are more suitable than a mulch layer of gravel.
