Hardscaping your garden with slate helps to create a trouble-free landscape where you can sit back and relax any time of year. In this blog, we’ll look at what hardscaping means, and how slate can improve your garden.
What is Hardscaping
Hardscaping is a type of landscaping using manmade materials. A good example of hardscaping is a pavement, patio or esplanade, but you can also use more unusual features using hard materials like slate and stone to create a clean, zen atmosphere.
Creating a maintenance-free garden is surprisingly easy and there are a variety of available materials to ensure a cohesive and attractive landscape. Slate is a versatile choice for garden hardscaping and has a natural appearance that combines well with plants and water features.
Coloured slate aggregate adds a decorative appeal to garden beds and borders, while slate paving adds a distinguished appearance to any patio or courtyard. Matching coloured slate with similarly coloured plants gives the image of a carefully crafted garden, perfect for relaxing in.
Add a Slate Wall to the Garden
If you plan to incorporate architectural features into the garden, building a slate wall adds height and depth to the landscape, while ensuring that distinct areas of the garden are clearly separated.
Walling slates are available in different colours and varied hues, and may be cut into more regular blocks, or have a more random look to give a rustic appearance. You can use slates to build your own wall or clad an existing wall to create a more decorative and appealing feature in the garden.
If you’re looking to keep your lawn, slate stepping-stones in the same colour can complement a slate wall very well.
Reduce the Need for Gardening with Hard Landscaping
If you don’t like spending your free time gardening, incorporating more slate into the landscape cuts out the need for garden maintenance and provides an ideal choice for creating areas for relaxation and leisure. Mowing the grass every week can become a chore, so getting rid of the lawn and replacing it with coloured slate aggregate makes great sense. Slate aggregates are available in a variety of colours and sizes. Why not contrast a traditional green slate from the Lake District with purple slate from Wales to create a more artistic look, while cutting out the need for regular weeding.
Planters and pots can be arranged around these areas to give colour and architectural balance and will only need regular watering to keep looking great throughout the year. Ideally, choose garden plants that work well in pots, and limit the variety, as this will reduce workload even more. If you plan to retain garden borders and beds, reduce the number of plants in the beds and use rocks and decorative slate aggregate to create a weed-free mulch that defies any weeds to grow and thrive.
If you feel that removing the majority of plants will make your garden feel a bit too static, then you might want to consider implementing some water features. The sound of water is also proven to help people to relax, so it is the perfect complement to a slate hardscaped garden.
Choosing the Right Plants for a Low-Maintenance Garden
Ideally, opt for only a handful of plants to work in combination in a low-maintenance garden, this will ensure any regular workload is cut. Plants to potentially avoid include delphiniums, which need regular staking; hostas, as they are continually eaten by garden pests; and climbers, as they require regular maintenance to keep climbing high up your trellis.
Easy to grow shrubs are an ideal choice; daphne, euonymus, lavender or holly. Seasonal colour can be added at different times of the year by incorporating ready planted containers and pots in strategic locations.
UK Slate provides a large variety of garden landscaping slate for projects, as well as slate roofing, interior floor tiles in slate and bespoke slate-ware for the home. Contact us or visit our website for more information.