Get Leftover Granite for Landscaping and Pathways

My fiance used to work in the granite industry, and still has some friends doing that work. Sometimes we can get a lot of free leftover pieces, which we’ve been using in the garden for landscaping. Before you lay any of the stones down, make sure you level the area so the granite will line up properly. Putting a fine layer of gravel down underneath the granite will help a lot too. We made a patio out of the biggest, most square chunks, and make stepping stones out of the smaller square pieces. We’ve also made a floor for our gazebo with a bunch of smaller grey and black chunks. He’s tried to fill in the cracks around them with gravel and small stones, but those wash out after heavy rains, even after he glued them together. And they still grow weeds anyway, unless we kill them with spray. What seems to work the best is to line them up with no gaps, or to use concrete to fill in the gaps, but I don’t like the concrete fill as much because it just looks plain. Maybe it would have looked better if we had used colored concrete. For the paths, I just let the grass grow around the stepping stones and keep it cropped down. Getting a variety of colors makes the patio look custom built, especially since we have some nice pink slabs. It’s important to vary the color patterns to make the most of the contrasting colors. The pink contrasts nicely with my landscaping and matches the pink flowers I have around the patio too. I also planted snow on the mountain to match the pink granite. If you don’t know anyone in the industry, you may not be able to get the chunks for free or get as big chunks, but even if you can only get smaller chunks you can do a small patio quite nicely.

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