You can always lay landscape fabric down first, or use RoundUp before and after.

I agree, use roundup first to kill all the perennial weeds. The annual weeds will not germinate under the stones. Then, if a dandelion or grass does later appear, use roundup once again to kill them.

Brenda

Here's a question from me. If you lay the landscape fabric under the rocks, what would you use to cover the fabric? You wouldn't want naked fabric showing between the rocks. I have some paths just laid right on the soil and it is difficult weeding through them. I've used fine sawdust before, but it seems too "visible", and the weeds eventually root in it too. Something like creeping thyme might help, but living in a wild area as i do, weeds are pretty persistant, and they come up all over.

I picked a lot of flat rocks out of the lake last summer, but i'm still working on getting them all home!

Good question Marcia.
I've been contemplating filling in between stones with creeping thyme, too, now that I know it will winter here, but I'm worried about weeds starting to grow amongst the thyme. I have grass in my chives and it's impossible to manually weed.

My neighbor laid a bunch of stone a year or two ago and she filled the cracks with course sand from an old river bed. It should discourage most things from establishing and also make for easy pulling. I'll have to ask her how it worked when I see her next.
This would be a lot of work, but maybe laying a bed of sand then fabric, then rocks, so that the rocks have something to settle into. Then fill in the cracks with the sand. It might doubly discourage the weeds from establishing.
Toots

Hi, Toots. Thought I'd contribute my thoughts on this.
We did something similar a couple of years ago at the bottom of our front steps and a path along the side of the house. We used broken up concrete pavers in both places. Used a sand base, crushed rock on top of that then positioned the pieces. Finally, put decorative rock to fill in the gaps between the pieces.

The photo shows the area at the bottom of the front steps.

Having said all that, I replaced the pathway this spring with 18 x 18 pavers on the crushed rock base and we are placing the one by the front steps this summer; simply because I want something different in both of those areas.

Margaret

O, I like the decorative rock idea! Its a nice contrast with the bigger stone and much more attractive and weed free than sand! And really, if you make a good base of crushed rock or sand, it's not so difficult to pull up the rocks and re-vamp like you're doing. Nice work.
Tootsie

I've always set the stone or?? on top of where I wanted it to go used a shovel to mark the edges then piced up the stone dug out that area then placed the stone bac in the hole, leveled it etc... That way it's level with the ground, not such a hazard for stepping off and hurting yourself or yo can mow over the area etc... Doing this method means thatweeds and grass are not an issue either. Good luck sounds like a great project.
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Margaret, that front step project is very attractive.
I was imagining a rather loose informal looking path in the garden where there is just compacted soil from being walked on. Toots, I will be interested to hear how your neighbor made out with the coarse sand as mulch. Right now I've just flopped the stones down over a cardboard barriere to see how they look. Maybe I could convince my DH to bring me some wood chips to use as mulch. Thanks everyone for your suggestions.