In article , Cherry Cherry.1skqvz@gar
denbanter.co.uk writes

My Dad lives next door to me and has a beautiful garden. I have just
done mine. New patio. new tree at the bottom and some turf layed
yesterday. He cut a border in for me and I am currently adding plants
that I had in pots from last year....however.... I am pebble mad
started by my children collecting them for me and now I have millions
which I saved from my old garden in order to put in my new garden. I
don`t like soil, to look at anyway and had planned on covering the
border after planting so that the soil was covered as I have done in my
front garden.

Problem being...Dad says no!

Why does he say no? It's your garden, so he needs to convince you ;-)

Will it harm my plants?

No

Why not, it will look pretty.

The pebbles will gradually get covered by accumulations of dead plants,
soil, etc. You may therefore feel the need to pick them all up every
year and shake and perhaps wash off the detritus.

Look up on Google Down House - Darwin's place. One of the famous
experiments he did - and it is still there - was put a large stone on
top of the garden and measure each year how much it had sunk into the
soil from earthworm activity - in other words, over time, pebbles will
get gradually buried unless you now and again do something about it.
Whether this matters or not is entirely up to you.

If your pebble border is up against the lawn, the grass will spread in
amongst them and it'll be less easy to weed than if it was just soil.
But laying a 'mowing strip' of bricks, slabs or whatever just slightly
lower than the lawn and along the lawn edge will make keeping the edges
neat a lot easier.

If you want to spread compost over your border, you'll have to lift up
the pebbles before you do that.

Oh, and it might increase the number of slugs. They like damp places to
hide out during the day.

Those are all the negatives I can think of.

The positives are the ability to enjoy your pebbles, and they will keep
weeds down to come extent. And I imagine they'll keep the ground
underneath a bit moister in the summer.

My advice would be to use them. You can always remove them later,
whereas if you end up throwing them out now, there's no going back.

Yes I am an amateur, but I do enjoy my garden so and had it all mapped
out it my head...any advice would be grately received.


Best bit of advice I can give is never accept advice unless the person
advising you can explain that advice, and you are convinced by their
reasoning ;-)


--
Kay
"Do not insult the crocodile until you have crossed the river"