8 Reasons Why Landscape Architects Love Natural Stone
Mar 25, 2023
When your esteemed guests are approaching the way to your home, they first encounter your façade contains a long walkway or driveway once they enter the door of your exterior landscape or garden.
The curb appeal of your landscape immediately catches the attention of your guest or passerby. The walk will remain smooth and engaging thanks to decorated sides with plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees with intense shadows.
Your porch is pleasing at first glance and inviting your guests warmly with various hues and designs on floors, walls, pillars, posts, and an entry door. Your guests will ring the bell and waiting for an entry. Meanwhile, they smelt the fresh fragrance from the flowers and plants nearby. It further augments their mood and getting charged with positive energy within.
In short, they highly impressed even before they watch your stunning interiors. Would you like to create such miracles in your exterior? It is only possible by hiring a seasoned and renowned landscape architect for your exterior design. Do you know how many types of landscape designs prevailing across the globe? Those are:
- Mediterranean Landscape
- English Formal Landscape
- Asian Landscape
- Cottage Landscape
- Desert Landscape
- The Modern Landscape Design
You might have noticed that all these couples of landscape designs have plenty of natural stones used in different elements differently. It poses an ultimate question of why landscape architects love natural stones such a way and use in abundance in their superior quality works? Let’s find the right answer to it.
1. Natural Stones a Versatile Material in Landscape Design
Exterior landscapes have various elements, such as
- Façade
- Porch
- Decks
- Backyard patio or garden patio in isolation
- Swimming pool areas
- Entry walkway
- Driveway to garage or parking
- Side plantations to a path with planters
- Outdoor kitchen, barbeque, and grills
- Outdoor furniture
- Outdoor Lighting Features
- Exterior facing walls of your building
- Siding walls & foundation walls
- Fire feature and fireplace
- Water feature, streams, and water ponds/pools
- Fountains
- Retaining walls within a landscape
- Boundary wall in the periphery
- Entry gate
- Stepping paths across the landscape spaces
All these mentioned components of your exterior home landscape can easily be decorated with appropriate natural stones, even running a theme across the entire landscape and exterior faces of your building.
2. Stones Are Naturally Unique Material for All Landscape Related Needs
Rocks are forming with several prolonged natural processes such as metamorphism and sedimentation, as well as igneous rocks from various earth building processes, including volcanic activities. Tons of pressures, various degrees of temperatures, and plenty of biochemical and chemical processes are resulting in the unique and never repeating designs in the rocks.
Therefore, two stone slabs or tiles are altogether different from each other in various aspects. Grains and veins in the stones are forming unique patterns. Crystallization and various oxidation like chemical processes yield unique colors and hues, which are hard to recreate in any manufacturing material without any repetition.
3. Stones Are Naturally Beautiful Material for Your Landscape Design
We have seen grains are forming due to crystallization and different metamorphic processes at a chemical level. Fossil depositions add more complexities and beauty in the many sedimentary rocks mainly found in the sea bed.
Veins are forming with various natural processes and create distinct patterns in rocks. Minerals and other debris create various colors and hues due to oxidation, crystallization, and other chemical processes with the mass of rocks.
These all are resulting in beautiful and stunning designs that you never found in any human-made artificial material at all.
4. Stones Are Aesthetically Pleasant Material in Landscape Design
Colors, grains, veins, and textures of stones are not fading easily. With wear & tear, overtime, stones become more rustic and aesthetically pleasant material. Stunning textures developed over the surfaces and enhanced to the overall appearance of stones giving a classic look-n-feel.
With different finishes, you can bring awesome textures and patterns in your landscape designs. Dazzling shining is possible with polishing stone surfaces that glares and reflects natural lights. Tumbling, bush hammering, brushing and flaming like finishing treatments on the stone surfaces augment natural textures hidden within the stone mass beautifully.
5. Stones Offer Immense Freedom in Your Landscape Designs
Stones are available in regular and irregular shapes and sizes. You can found square, rectangular, and rounded, and oval shaped stones. Thickness variation is possible in stones. Thus, you can create a variety of design layouts for outdoor paving, wall cladding, and other needs.
Different types of stones have different natural colors and hues that give you enough freedom to bring color variations in your landscape designs. You can create matching or contrasting themes with stones and rocks.
Marbles and other stones have grains and veins in different patterns and styles. Thus, you can show natural variations and beauty in your design using stones.
6. Natural Stones Lets You Create Non-slip Surfaces in Your Landscape Designs
Stones are natural rocks cut into desired shapes for various application in the construction industry. Therefore, stones have naturally occurring pits and fissures on the surfaces. When we give appropriate finishes, stone surfaces become skid-free or non-slippery in look-n-feel.
It saves users of your landscape components like floors on patios, porches, and decks from slipping accidents during wet days and humid conditions in outdoor spaces. Swimming pools and surrounding areas have higher chances of slipping due to water splashes. Thus, hones and tumbles stone finishes can help your landscape architects to give you non-slip surfaces.
7. Natural Stones Withstand Climatic Adversities When Used in Your Landscape Designs
Natural stones are porous and containing various chemicals/minerals, which are giving them a capacity to withstand hot and cold climates easily. Stones are not getting heat easily during hot days. It lets you walk barefoot even under the mid-day Sun in summer. Quartzite and marbles have such properties and ideal for desert landscaping.
Slate, granite, and sandstones are ideal stone materials for cold climates because such stones hardly break or crack in frost or heavy snowfall conditions. For rainy days, stones enable us to walk easily and dry up quickly by never retaining dampness on the surfaces.
The simple cleaning process is enough for stones to restore their charms. Landscape architects know that stone can place into streaming water or a pond as stepping stones or rocks for landscape design. Therefore, they love stone the most.
8. Natural Stones Are Durable, Sturdy, and Easy to Maintain Material for Your Landscapes
We know about hardness, water absorption, and other physical properties of natural stones. Stones hardly break or crack with normal pressure and standard hits. So, it is safe and strong material with natural beauty and aesthetics.
Wears & tears often augment the appearance of stones instead of fading in color and textures. Classic look increases the charms of stone surfaces and increases the overall property value when used in the landscape as well as in interior designs.
Washing stones with plain water or standard washing detergent can restore its beauty. Siliceous stones are resistant to staining with spills and other causes. Stains can be removed easily from calcareous stones with proper treatments and care.
You can replace stone slabs, tiles, or cubes easily if you find any damage in it. Getting matching stone piece in your design is easy today and makes the restoration process smooth.
Conclusion:
If your landscape architect prefers natural stones in your landscape design, accept it immediately and try to allocate a somewhat higher budget for it. You will gain immense benefits in the long run and a good return in reselling value. For high-quality stones for your exterior applications, World of Stone USA is an ideal place. You have a huge inventory of stones to select and cost-effective deals to close.
