Limestone Landscape Design Ideas

by Carolyn
(Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

This landscape design ideas using limestone remnants was a pretty simple project. My thoughts anyway - my husband didn't necessarily see it that way... I did pick out the stone, haul concrete bags, mix it and cut the rocks so they fit. Angle grinder with a diamond blade works awesome! ;-)

Anyway, we were trying to think of a few landscape design ideas to add a little pizazz to our yard / driveway. (It's a dirt driveway so we couldn't really hurt anything!)

After driving all over looking at houses for months ... and months, we came up with the idea of building two posts, one on on either side of the driveway. We saw this at a lot of homes and it always looked nice.

As soon as we found the post design we liked best, I jumped out of the car with my handy dandy tape measure and started yelling dimensions out. Darren scribbled them down, snapped a few photos and away we went.

To build our posts! Here's what we did:

1. Concreted in a green treated 4x4 post. (one on each side)
2. Built a frame out of green treated 2x4's & attached to the post.
3. Made a box out of plywood (in place) and attached it to the frame.
4. Put metal lathe on the entire box.
5. Mudded it and attached the faux stone.

I called around for the traditional concrete caps. They quoted me $240 for one cap. So I went to see Tony, our favorite fabricator and found a couple of limestone remnants to use instead.

He cut them & Darren polished the edges.

Before putting the limestone on top of the post, we put down a mud base and placed the limestone on top. This way the limestone was level and adhered nice and snug.

After it dried, we put a bead of 100% silicone between the limestone & edge of the rocks to keep it water tight. Lions went on top!

Here's what it looks like:



We added the same limestone remnants on a couple of planters across from these posts and also for the sill plates by our basement windows. Yep... pizazz! What do you guys think?