I need help calculating potential cost for building a pebble stone walkway
on the side of an office building. The walkway is made of dirt, and it is
the only way to get from the main parking lot in back of the building to the
front entrance. During heavy rains it floods and you end up getting a lot
of mud on shoes. We had the idea to lay down about 2 inches of pebble
stone, and then set on top of the pebble stone flagstone to use as stepping
stones. This would hopefully raise the steps high enough to get out of the
accumulating water.

I had an intern today do a rough volume measurement to calculate the amount
of pebble stone to buy, and I was surprised by the result. The walkway is
about 160 feet long, and varies between 3 feet and 8 feet wide, probably
averaging about five feet. If we lay down under two inches of pebble
stone, we calculated that we would need about 223 cubic feet of material,
which we calculated based on weight and volume of the pebblestone to be
about 13K pounds of stone, a little over six metric tons.

That strikes me as a lot of stone. Does this sound ballpark correct for
the amount of space described here? This assumed we pretty much covered
all of the walkway space with pebble stone that is about two inches deep.
After seeing the amount of stone here, I'm ready for Plan B, which might be
something like building a very narrow strip of pebble stone. I just worry
about that dispersing over time.

What kind of contractor would be good at designing something like this?
The gardeners seem to have fairly random ideas about it. Is there
something equivalent to an "interior decorator" for outside garden areas?
What should I be searching for in yellow pages?

--
Will