With only a few weeks left until our backyard wedding, we decided to hire out that patio work to avoid the stress and allow ourselves to put the finishing touches on the wedding tasks that we had to complete. We just got a bunch of estimates and went with the people who we thought were best for the job! Three years later we’re still loving what they did for us (we went with cobblestone-like pavers and spent a few thousand dollars for the whole shebang)!

xo,
s

It’s really about the look you like (does one appeal more than the other?). Mulch is also lower maintenance for weeding (we found that our rock beds still had to be weeded a lot more than our mulch ones) but it does have to be laid each season. Although rocks do have to be refreshed every once in a while because they have a strange habit of mysteriously thinning out over time. It’s all about which look you like better. Both can work!

xo,
s

I love looking at your website for ideas.

I started to tackle our front garden bed this weekend. We’ve had our house for 2 years and all we had was grass. I got the plants in and now I’m trying to decide between regular mulch or rock. I thought I was all decided on mulch but then we’ve had several people tell us rock was better because you only have to lay it once, whereas mulch loses it color before the season is over and you have to lay it down every year. I know both have their pros and cons, how do I decide?

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Hey Benjamin,

We definitely do our part to keep things super eco around here (we have a compost bin, a rain barrel, low-e windows, and even a dual flush toilet). So we certainly considered the environment when landscaping our yard and intentionally selected regional grass seed that does extremely well here without tons of water (once established we haven’t watered the lawn at all, even through summer droughts for the past two years). We also never fertilize the lawn (sometimes we sprinkle some of our homemade compost around, but other than that it’s completely self sustaining). We do mow it in the spring and fall, but we keep the blades of grass relatively high and don’t do it as often as most people (since longer blades soak up more sun and water for healthier grass that’s low-maintenance, more deeply rooted, and gorgeous!). And the best thing about those aforementioned summer droughts is that we don’t usually have to cut the grass much in the summer at all, so it’s actually quite low maintenance and easy on mother nature as well. Hope it helps!

xo,
s

Hey Courtney,

Just three weeks before our backyard wedding we decided not to risk a failed or stressful DIY project so we hired out our patio (we got a number of estimates to lock in the best price). But Nicole over at makingitlovely.com laid her own back patio and it came out amazing (so if you check in over there and search “patio” you’ll find her post about it). Hope it helps!

xoxo,
Sherry

Oh yeah, mulch is the big secret. It seems weird to waste time and money on glorified wood chips, but a nice thick layer makes everything look about 100 times better than before the application, and it keeps about 99% of the weeds out (and makes plucking any stragglers really easy too). It took us a while to learn the secret (and a whole lot of wasted weeding) but now that we’re privy to the magic of mulch we can’t wait to get ours down in the spring (preferably before any weeds start to make an appearance).

-John