Rocks do look nice when kept up with and your home/landscape works with them. I would think a nice battery powered leaf blower would come in handy since they are convenient without the cords and will allow you to continually keep the rocks free of debris as much as possible and as frequently as needed. You would want one that is high powered though to really help avoid the bane of rocks.

I notice in the intro you gave no reason WHY you might want to convert to gravel mulch.

Why...??

Tired of spreading mulch every spring.

Rocks seem to be more of long term problem unless you keep up with the debris issue and them getting out of their beds. Have you looked into a "chunkier" type of wood mulch that lasts more then a single year? where are you in the country?

"Tired of ..." Haha ... you'll be trading one problem for a worse one. Rock mulch gets weeds and collects debris so must be maintained to prevent these occurrences. Imagine if trying to get rid of the mulch you have now, you learned that to do so would be majorly costly or like a 3-years-hard-labor prison sentence?? That's what it would be like trying to get rid of rocks. How does nature solve this problem? It would be extremely rare for one to find a natural place where only mulch covered the ground. Instead, nature grows plants on almost every square inch of ground that is soil. Only solid rocks are left plant-free, and just barely, when moisture is present.

I suggest that you emulate nature's way and plant groundcover at areas where you now have mulch-only. As groundcover plants grow solid, it will end your need for re-mulching. Instead of looking at barren earth (with either gravel or bark mulch) you'll be looking at lush greenery.

In a few years we went from mulch mulch mulch to give them a couple weeks to grow and you'll never see the ground. We re-mulch as needed. Once things are big enough, the wind doesn't blow it and the rain doesn't wash it away. I wanted rocks desperately when we first bought our place b/c I thought it would be "prettier" and my parents, who have gardens up the ying yang, explained why they don't use rock-the reasons listed above. The people who lived here before us had used white rock around the outside of the house---talk about an absolute *nightmare* getting all that crap out. Now, I've seen some very lovely beds under trees that were all rock, w/a few things planted in pots nestled in there, and I've seen some nice areas that were rock, made to look like a "stream" b/c of how the ground was. But for actual flower/plant beds, not so much.

We took out 6,000 lbs of brick chip a couple years ago. It was awful. Former owners had put down landscaping cloth and brick chip. It was a shady area but ended up covered in weeds and volunteer maple trees every summer. The weeds were hard to pull and kneeling on rock to pull weeds in torturous. I also couldn’t grow anything there because the rocks got too hot (even in the shade) for most plants. It took a month of shoveling and a dump truck to get rid of all of the rock. I will never ever recommend putting down rock.

My former husband thought I was going to keep a 100' gravel verge beside our driveway weed-free. He was wrong, of course, which I could have told him well in advance. We eventually raked off as much gravel as we could and put a lawn down.

One other issue I have had with rocks is that they never stay exactly where they have been placed. They end up in the lawn becoming projectiles when hit by the lawn mower and on the driveway and sidewalk where they injure tires and bare feet.

Use shredded redwood mulch three inches deep. It won’t travel. Rocks are a pain to upkeep. Depending on where you live, rocks create a “heat island” around your house in the summer.

One hundred percent in the no rocks camp. Mostly against the dyed mulch but of those two choices, it is still mulch.

Please forget you ever even considered rock “mulch.” The only way to absolutely ensure a weed free bed would be to use copious amounts of toxic weed killer to deter weeds. Yes, even a wood-mulched bed will sprout weeds, but it is so much easier to weed than a rock covered bed.

Thank you so much, everyone! Decision made. no rocks. You answered all our questions. As far as considering a chunkier type of wood mulch, I have not but will check it out.

I don't think you want chunkier mulch, but shredded, which mats down and "knits" together along the lines of how felt it produced. But first, of course, plant some groundcover in it. If you want help with laying out beds, show pictures of the overall space. (If space is large, take sequential, slightly overlapping pictures as you pan the camera. Or use the panoramic feature of the camera.)

Not chunkier---finer.

Fine chunks can wash easily. Shredded "felts"-interlocks into a mat that tends to stay put.

I was bringing up getting the chunkier mulch since the OP was getting tired of seasonal application of mulch. It does not rot down as fast as finely shredded mulches for, though obviously you cant use on hills or flooding areas. Maybe doing a mix you will get by not having to apply once a year.

OP:

From what river is the business pictured in your opening post harvesting the river rock

(which they are selling at $80 a ton)?

I only have a small area of Pennsylvania bluestone, big, small and gravel in the crevasses. I use a weed torch and it works great.

Well this was a wonderfully timed thread! I wanted easier flower beds and was considering adding rocks too. I thought they always look so good and nice and neat. Back to the drawing board. Do you think it is possible to have a simple, low key flower bed if going "nature's way" as @Yardvaark suggested? I love wild type looks, but I don't know that it would go with brick Georgian colonial.

I have no idea where they harvest the rocks. Is $80 a ton expensive?

@vadeb, I'm saying that nature uses the concept of completely covering the soil in plants. I'm not suggesting "wild type looks." Man is more successful when he works in concert with nature, but he refines raw nature. There's nothing need look wild about a bed of groundcover. "Wild" is nearly antithetical to almost any and everything I propose.