How do you make your garden look neat, pretty, stylish and like you haven’t thrown it all together but planned it carefully? Well, one of the most important things that it’s so easy to forget is the sort of material you’re going to use on your paths. If you’ve got an informal bit to your garden, you don’t want something too structured like paving, but you do want to make sure that the plot looks intentional. So gravel and pebbles make great materials.

But you need to think about what the planting plan is, and match it to the gravel. So often I’ve seen gravel that doesn’t match the plants around it at all, and the result is jarring. I’ve been through the UK Water Features website, and here are some planting ideas to match their gravel.

These blue slate chippings would look great with drifting blueish plants like Nepeta, Globe Thistles, and lavender. But create some nice contrasts with lime greens, too like alchemillas or big golden grasses.

And this apricot gravel would work perfectly with a big, riotous hot planting of crocosmias, chocolate cosmos, geums and rubeckias.

And a gravel like this should be used in a marine-style planting, with larger stones and pebbles, driftwoods, and succulents. The key with something like this is to let the plants dominate, otherwise a bright gravel can seem pretty overwhelming.