Deck Landscaping With Rocks and More Plants

Deck landscaping with rocks is a great option to create a clean, gorgeous oasis in your backyard that is easy to maintain year after year! Learn the best way to lay rocks around a deck to create a clean edge and prevent weeds.

Deck landscaping with rocks and more plants

Hey ladies and gents! Our tiny backyard is coming along nicely, and I’m starting to fall in love with it. For last week’s post, we built some raised garden beds. So this is one of those weeks where I don’t feel like there is much visible progress. We finally discovered the location of not one…but TWO wasp nests in the rafters of our second-story deck.

After a targeted assault didn’t do the trick, Mike took everything off of the deck and pretty much doused the entire area in wasp poison. We were seeing an uncountable number of wasps every day, so it had to be done. Sorry to mother nature and the entire wasp family tree we eradicated. Scorched earth was the way to go.

Once the area no longer smelled like the site of a chemical weapons factory (also thanks to some heavy rains we got the day after spraying), we went back in, hosed everything down, washed the dec with Sal Suds (my fav multipurpose cleaner), let everything dry, and put it all back together. Oof. Thankfully, though, we did have some unseasonably warm weather to work with, which allowed us to make up for some lost time.

Extending the rock landscaping around the deck

As I mentioned in last week’s update, we decided the extend the rock landscaping all the way down to the garden bed on the right. The slope in that area of the yard made putting another garden bed there challenging, but I wanted to nix some of the grass. I also thought it’d be a nice area for some of the full-sun container veggies. So we focused on that. It’s the area where the lawnmower and black pot are below.

We followed pretty much the same steps I outlined in my week 2 post. And we also ended up using the drainage rocks to make the slope a bit more level and then filled the whole area up with river rock. We got it from a local nursery at $6 for a five-gallon bucket. I leveled out a few pavers for bigger potted plants, too. For smaller ones, I’ll just set them down in the gravel.

Adding rocks around the gas meter side of the deck

We also worked on the gas meter area, which was a hot mess. Once the deck trim was finished off, I dug that area up, buried that random cut wire because I was too scared to do anything with it, and rocked the whole area to match.

Before pouring down the river rock into the area, I hammered down a simple no-dig black landscaping border. This stuff works so well and creates a really clean edge to hold all of the rock in. Then I added down some landscaping fabric before getting to work dumping the rocks.

And I liked it so much I added more!

So we were done with rock landscaping…until I decided that I liked the clean look of the rocks and pavers so much that I decided to extend it all around the entire deck, connecting the two areas that we had rocked. More work, but I think it was the right move.

This strategy will also help keep the white trim around the deck from getting cut up by the weedwacker accidentally or getting badly stained by grass (it has already showed some grass staining). I also decided to put three pavers off the area of the deck we want to be the main walkway to step off. More black landscape edging and weed-blocking landscape fabric.

Then, I put some other pavers off the side of the deck by the gas meter where I’ll put some potted plants. Again, we had planned to do another bed here and put in some tall greenery for added privacy, but the slope here would make the garden bed challenging. More rocks it is!

One tip for rock landscaping…have an extra bag (or, in our case, bucket) handy to tweak the levels after your first big rain. Especially if you’re near a gutter. Things will shift a bit as everything settles into place.

Bringing in some more plants

This space was looking really nice, but I was dying to get some greenery in there. You can see bits of the greens in the previous photos. I love, love, love Pot Clips and have used them for a few projects before (hanging succulent planter, vertical outdoor garden, key rack).

Highly recommend. They are super sturdy and durable, and they help you maximize the sunniest spots in your yard or home by going vertical. I chose to use these for my herbs up along one of the second-story deck footers. Here’s a peek. Herbs are still looking kinda rough this early in the season outdoors.

AND HERE’S A RECAP OF THE TO-DO LIST…

• Build a platform deck (not DIY—having a licensed contractor do it to make sure it’s done right)
• Add additional lighting—hanging? string?
• Clean up area around the AC unit and the gas meter/gutter using rocks
• Build table and benches for deck (Done, actually. Just need to finish them off with some no-slip bottoms because the Trex is very slick.)
• Build screen for AC unit and all of those wires and boxes back there
• Hang plants
• Build veggie beds and lattice for climbing veggies
• Hang swing for Ramona
• General landscaping around the fence perimeter (flowers, bushes, etc)
• Maybe: Privacy screening for the deck area (depending on the cost, and I don’t think I want to DIY this)
• Major maybe: Let myself do a little shopping for some fun items like a large outdoor vase planter—budget depending

2021 rock landscaping update!

Popping in a few years after originally publishing this post to share an update! The rock landscaping around the deck has been a really low-maintenance option for us. The weed-blocking landscape fabric has done a great job of keeping weeds out. And anything that pops through I usually just yank out.

After each winter when we’re cleaning up things in the backyard for the spring, I just inspect the little plastic stakes along the black landscape edging. I take a mallet and pound down any stakes that have come loose over the winter to straighten things up.

After the first winter, we had to go back to the nursery to get another 5-gallon bucket of river rock to fill in some spots that had settled or gotten uneven. The next spring, though, we didn’t have to do this. So I’m thinking that means things had settled into where they wanted to be after a year.

Here is a whole post about our little backyard in 2019, and then the yard again in 2020. Lots of updated pics so you can see how everything is holding up. I’ll tell you what, though—the rock landscaping around the HVAC unit has probably been the best! We might not see it behind the DIY HVAC unit screen we built, but it helps to keep things clean and tidy. And no cutting grass back there!

Here are a few shots of our little townhouse oasis this year. We’re loving the rock landscaping and wish you luck putting yours in!!

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