Our sunny mild climate produces way too many fast-growing weeds to maintain a pretty lawn or have flowers that don't get overtaken by weedsd -- plus our water district is forever limiting days of watering yards. S-o-o-o we decided to paver stone as much of the back and front yards as possible to keep down weeds and conserve water.
FRONT YARD WEEDS took over the grass lawn every year and we won't use weed killer around our pets!
There's NO WAY 3 to 4 pet chickens could keep down these front yard weeds although they did have fun trying!!!
Our solution was to paver stone the front yard and cover the lawn as much as possible. We chose to use paver squares rather than a solid concrete patio because there are water and gas lines below ground so paver stones are easily lifted and re-positioned afterwards for line access in future; whereas a solid concrete patio would get badly torn up and expensive to replace.
FRONT YARD work still in progress.
FRONT YARD GARAGE WALL along front walkway to front door is paver-stoned and used as additional gardening bed -- NO MORE HORRENDOUS WEED PROBLEMS.
BACK YARD "people" patio has roofed concrete patios/walkways with the rest paver-stoned along with two raised garden beds made out of pavers too. Pop-up canopies are on the "chicken" side. People & chicken yards are separated by 4-ft wire fencing.
Even some of the "chicken" yard has been paver-stoned keeping our homemade chicken seed bottles cleaner.
Since we started using paver stones in our yard several neighbors have picked up the idea to keep down unwanted vegetation/weeds. Pavers squares work better than mulch or bark for keeping down weeds. Bark and mulch get blown away in our Santa Ana Winds climate whereas stones don't blow away LOL!
As an added note -- I would not recommend paver stones for snowy or icey climates since the porous stones will soak up water, expand/contract in temperature changes, become brittle and deteriorate or crack from the drastic temp variances. For our sunny mild So Calif climate that never reaches freezing our stones have weathered nicely for over 12 years now.
FRONT YARD WEEDS took over the grass lawn every year and we won't use weed killer around our pets!
There's NO WAY 3 to 4 pet chickens could keep down these front yard weeds although they did have fun trying!!!
Our solution was to paver stone the front yard and cover the lawn as much as possible. We chose to use paver squares rather than a solid concrete patio because there are water and gas lines below ground so paver stones are easily lifted and re-positioned afterwards for line access in future; whereas a solid concrete patio would get badly torn up and expensive to replace.
FRONT YARD work still in progress.
FRONT YARD GARAGE WALL along front walkway to front door is paver-stoned and used as additional gardening bed -- NO MORE HORRENDOUS WEED PROBLEMS.
BACK YARD "people" patio has roofed concrete patios/walkways with the rest paver-stoned along with two raised garden beds made out of pavers too. Pop-up canopies are on the "chicken" side. People & chicken yards are separated by 4-ft wire fencing.
Even some of the "chicken" yard has been paver-stoned keeping our homemade chicken seed bottles cleaner.
Since we started using paver stones in our yard several neighbors have picked up the idea to keep down unwanted vegetation/weeds. Pavers squares work better than mulch or bark for keeping down weeds. Bark and mulch get blown away in our Santa Ana Winds climate whereas stones don't blow away LOL!
As an added note -- I would not recommend paver stones for snowy or icey climates since the porous stones will soak up water, expand/contract in temperature changes, become brittle and deteriorate or crack from the drastic temp variances. For our sunny mild So Calif climate that never reaches freezing our stones have weathered nicely for over 12 years now.
