Landscape Design and Materials
The client for whom we completed this project is a landscape architect who came to us with a layout already in mind for his own yard. This unique landscape design features elements aligned with the central axis of the yard and a patio with paving units that break up along the edge so that the patio appears to dissolve into the lawn area. We worked together to select the materials we would use to bring his vision to life and settled on granite, a versatile stone that we source locally from quarries in the Elberton area, less than one hour away. As stone masons we love working with granite because of it's timeless beauty and extreme durability, altough the hardness of granite does wear out our chisels and other stone cutting tools faster than a softer stone. The classic look of rough split granite creates a unique contrast with the modern style of the dissolving liner patio stones.
Custom Patio and Fire Pit
A focal point of this project is the dry laid granite patio installed around the custom fire pit. The patio stones are all different sized rectangles and squares, split on site to exact dimenstions out of larger slabs and carefully fitted together with tight joints that don't require any filling material. This combination of dry laid stones and tight, unfilled joints creates a very long lasting patio with virtually zero maintenance required: there is no mortar to crack and no other joint material to ever wash out from between the stones.
Hardscape Installation
Before laying the stones, we excavated the footprint of the patio, compacted the sub grade, installed a base layer of crushed stone (also known as road base or crusher run) and compacted again. Above this base layer the stones sit on a bedding layer of smaller washed gravel that allows water to drain into the joints between the stones. This method of base preperation minimizes the chance of any stones moving for a very long time after installation, and because the patio is dry laid, if in the future any factors like large tree roots were to heave up or destabilize some of the paving stones, they can simply be lifted back up and re-set after adjusting the height of the bedding gravel underneath.
We built the fire pit and short retaining wall out of granite slabs installed vertically like curb stones. The fire pit has a metal insert on the inside to protect the stones from the heat of the fire, which can damage or crack stones by causing water that has absorbed into the stone to rapidly expand. The granite step treads that lead up to the driveway are single stones fabricated off site with a 14 foot saw and "thermal" faced on the top. This process makes use of the same phenomenon by which fire can damage stones: the heat of an oxygen-acetylene torch causes little pieces of the stone to pop off like popcorn, giving the cut side of the stone a more natural looking rough texture that is both attractive and non-slip.
Rain Garden and Bridge
This job also involved regrading the middle lawn section of the yard to create a wide and gentle swale aligned with the central axis of the fire pit, directing stormwater into a rain garden. After digging out the rain garden and filling the bottom with a well draining sandy soil, we lined the sides with local fieldstone to stabilize the sides. The rain garden will allow more stormwater to infiltrate into the soil rather than adding to excessive runoff. When there is too much rainfall to be held by the rain garden, the overflow onto the adjacent slope is stabilized with more stones to slow the water and prevent erosion.
The rain garden is spanned by a stone bridge, for which we used a single thick slab of granite, allowing this section of the yard to be crossed on foot without walking through the swale bottom. The vertical granite "pillar" stones on either side of the bridge create a "portal" both while looking down the axis of the bridge and the axis of the swale.
