Serving Nanaimo & Area
250.210.0895
Many of our landscape installations make heavy use of natural stone, including basalt, sandstone, and granite.
When used correctly and with the appropriate artistic eye, natural stone can help reconnect a landscape to its natural origin. It can blend a manufactured landscape into its surroundings, and provide a look and feel that wasn’t previously imagined.
Beyond rugged good looks, stone installations also offer great functionality and strength. This makes natural stone a beautiful and practical alternative to common moulded concrete products such as Allan Block.
Natural stone is a great choice for building:
Natural stone can also be used as accent pieces within your landscape, and slab-like pieces can be carefully placed to mimic exposed bed rock.
FLAT IS WHERE IT'S AT: Flagstone is a great choice for flat surfaces as well. Check out our Patios & Pathways page for more information.
Material choices and applications are highly variable, and our local suppliers offer a huge range of natural stone products. Below you can learn about some of our favourites, but this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Get in touch with us and we can advise on some excellent options for your landscape.
Stone retaining walls and terraces are built from boulders of quarried basalt, granite, or specially-ordered wall stone. We offer several distinct styles that result in a beautiful and long-lasting landscape feature.
Stacking large boulders atop one another is a somewhat “quick and dirty” wall building method that creates a strong, functional feature. When building stacked boulder walls, we align the faces and the height to keep within bounds, but only taking the time to fit pieces into the largest and easiest gaps.
This approach creates a strong wall with a somewhat irregular face. The construction of stacked walls requires less time when compared to a jigsaw-style wall, which helps to reduce overall costs.
This method is an excellent choice for less visible areas, such as levelling a property where the living space is above the wall and so the wall is rarely seen.
IT'S ALIVE! It is possible to use a stacked boulder style in highly visible locations if it is heavily interplanted. This will create a lush, living wall aesthetic.
For more prominent areas, we prefer to use a jigsaw boulder wall approach. This method allows us to take the time to select boulders with cleaner, flatter faces for building the wall. We will also work in an abundance of smaller pieces, adding an unbeatable level of detail to a boulder wall.
IT'S ALL IN THE NAME: We call this a jigsaw wall because the finished product feels like nature’s interpretation of a jigsaw puzzle.
For a living wall, we can leave specific areas open for inserting plant material like ferns, perennials, sedums, or ground covers.
With or without planting, jigsaw boulder walls are a great choice for highly visible areas such as along a driveway or the edge of a property where the living space is below the wall.
Terracing your landscape allows you to build raised, flat-topped banks of earth to help delineate your space into more usable zones.
Stone terraces are similar in construction to retaining walls, but built on a much smaller scale.
Depending on the application and the size of material we're working with, stone terraces are often only one to two stones in height.
Absolutely. We often build stone terraces with clean, tight faces and irregular tops, letting cascading plant material spill down between the tallest tops of the stones. These are beautiful additions to a landscape and will help improve access and the planting situation on a slope.
A simple stone border will add valuable definition, elevations, and aesthetic appeal to a garden.
We love to use stone borders as an opportunity to a give rise and fall to a landscape, where the left-to-right profile of the garden beds will undulate and roll.
You can also use natural stone borders within a garden bed to construct an elevated planting area.
Stone borders work best when delineating a garden area from a gravel or paving stone pathway or patio. We generally avoid using stone borders on their own to separate a garden and lawn area, as turf roots will creep into the rock work and into the garden.
Yes, though we recommend an edging product (like Bender Board or Precision Edging) which is installed below ground to keep the turf roots out. We can then build the stone borders behind the edging, ensuring that your gardens and rock-work stay free of grass.
Basalt stair treads are a gorgeous landscape feature that add a functional, rustic aesthetic.
In landscapes where steep grade changes are unavoidable and access is necessary, a nice solid step is required. When building steps and stairs, we much prefer using natural stone options rather than manufactured concrete blocks for the way they blend in and compliment the surrounding landscape.
Natural stone stair treads can be used effectively as a single step or stacked together for a set of stairs. They are available in a huge variety of sizes, making natural stone a functional choice for both large and small applications.
Basalt stair treads come in two types:
Both the rough split and saw cut tread options have their place in the landscape, and we will make recommendations depending on the specific application and budget.