Just did a number of gardens for a big plant trial; I was in Montpelier VA, and there wasn't a single stone we didn't bring in. In this neck of the woods it's laughable to think about buying stone when you can usually ask a local farmer if you can clean out one of his pastures for him, but I didn't find ANY stone anywhere down there that wasn't bought and paid for.

All of your queries are are job specific (are you building walls, doing a stone arrangement, pea stone for a raked gravel area?), but take it from a cheap swamp Yankee, get it delivered unless you are just getting two or three stones (back of a pick-up). The wear and tear that a load of stone puts on a vehicle and it's springs, shocks, etc. can quickly make it a losing proposition to do it yourself...(experience speaking here...)

Hi Scott. Rick here. : )

Anytime you want to team up and explore possible painterly image stones for Japanese Garden, Please !!be my guest !! I have little experience but : ) To me the only true to heart aspect of Japanese Garden is "How " one aquired the materials . "How" one "See's" the materials. I know majority of a gardens materials is probably bulk stock that time and money dictates average person to use.

I have not as of yet met another person who would enjoy walking for 15 hours a local hunting ground for stone ( Blaze Orange Cloths Required? : ) Stone gazers might be in season haha ). Seems like a long day but between eating breakfast lunch and early dinner and the time to drive around and walk ? Time goes by fast hee hee. Might not find one stone Ha .

Would be nice to hear another persons thoughts while stone viewing together .Haphazerdly talking of random boulders rocks .

I have thought of garden viewing already exhisting Japanese Gardens as best route to learning . I have not done this as of yet. I'm slow to act .I dont trust local Japanese Gardens . I feel as if they will pollute my mind wiht haphazerd placements to amuse tourist , onlooker. I'm Lazy to be honest. Somehow I think when one cultivates a self aquired taste nurtured through what you "See" while wandering terrian , hills mountians rivers etc. , the natural aspects placement size ratio and balence are soaked in like a sponge.With some sense of abstract art and power of suggestion like being a poet rock gardens look Japanese enough.After this process then touring a local Japanese Garden would be awesome !! Compare self taught learning process to a finished assembled whole garden. Why I am scared to go looking at Jpanese Gardens as of yet. I dont want to loose my individuality . I am lacking the wisdoms Buddhism and Shinto and fashion style historic periods Japan so rock viewing for me is just gut feeling .

I'm in the mood for Japanese Gardens again.Been almost year since last time I have thought of them as a study to be honest. So I am here typing : )

Rick.

"That depends" is a pretty lame answer. Whenever I hear that comment I tend to move on to the next shop. As a customer, I expect professionals to lay out options and clear prices.

Anyway, in the Chicago area a pro can apparently get decent rock delivered for about $70 per ton. A joe blow homeowner like me usually ends up paying about $200 per ton, and that's just dumped in the lawn. It costs even more to have it moved into the garden area

Patjonking, Chris74robinson, keithnotrichard, bahamababe, et al --- you folks certainly seem to be on the same page.

Lee

Somehow Lee I do not think you and I are the only ones to have made that observation.

Graham

Ah the hauntings continue...

What kind of rock, "Chris"? Moss stone? Cut and polished? Wall stone? Ashlar? Brown stone? Maybe Pennsylvania bluestone? Handpicked or bulk?

I expect professionals to lay out options and clear prices...

How tiresome. Guess I have to dissappear for a while again. Or maybe I could give up all vestiges of decency and self-respect and use a fake name to log in...

shrug, are not these commonalities and other indicators good things? at least the pages are the same,

as Scott mentions, when rock becomes stone depends on the variety, the scarcity, whether quarried or collected, means of transport, etc.

Collected stone from fields is determined by the machinery used, the time, selection, need to move to another site for necessary matches, shapes, quality, etc. then comes delivery.
Pre-sorted stone, = selection time, loading, stone price, delivery and delivery time to a destination.
Then installation is depending on machinery, tripods / sleds or backhoes with thumbs or skidsteers with forks and/or slings for installation. each is a different calculation based mostly upon access into the site.
all depends...
edzard

Thanks Chris, for the price info. One garden center told me they charge $20 per cubic foot for "landscape boulders." Does this sound right?

Bravo! ... Brava!
Gloria Swanson couldn't have done it better! -- definitely 'Golden Globe' territory..

Jack

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1010664}}

OK --- here's my straight answer for the magazine (where a stone story will undoubtedly appear before long) --- In my experience, getting the right stone at the right time and handled properly (i.e., not all scratched up) is much more important than the price of the stone. Cultivating good relationships with suppliers is much more productive than demanding flat prices and bargain hunting. If you are a one-time non-professional buyer, you may have trouble getting good stone --- it depends on many factors (so now you can fire me and move on to the next commentator). Procuring and selling good stone is not an easy business, and the sellers deserve respect and good pay. That's my opinion.

Lee

P.S. Hilarious link, Jack! Thank you once again for making my day.

Scotty, Lee, Edzard... Still can't come up with a price for the lady? That's pretty weak.

Patjon, I'd guess that $20 per cubic foot is in the ballpark. Still, one man's "landscape boulder" might not amount to much in the world of Japanese gardens, where rock is expected to be somewhat handsome.

shrug, I guess we're talking apples and quince,
I expect and look for unassuming stone that is hardly handsome,

your 20.00 'stone' prices equate to left over rip rap for roads readied for crusher use --pricing as indicated is measured by cubic foot, since quarry 'garden' stone is calculated by weight, $$ per tonne.
This is based on how much tare weight a truck delivery can handle.

hereabouts, people that charge for larger 'riprap' by the cubic foot, are avoided, since accuracy for cubism comes into question. you get what you pay for, and what you enquire about.

Quarries now have installation services available, which means that the price of the stone is paid directly to the quarry by the client, rather than the gardener. There are no markups, etc. pricing ranges from 220.00 to 800.00 and up per tonne. then comes the installation time per crane, people etc.

Mostly these stones are undesirable. being too 'fresh'.
The only value to the gardener is time used for the placement of the stone.

-some people have tried valuing stone by cubic yard, -ie trucks carrying 11 yds, = sq. yardage, however, the stones just don't want to flow into a convenient shape to be cube priced... nor is water displacement a convenient measure.

pjk, why do you ask such a general question?

I know somebody who has a pickup truck & he thinks that $20 per cu. ft. sounds reasonable and that $70 per ton even more reasonable - assuming 1 cu. ft. weighs about 165 lbs* and assuming that the rock(s) are nondescript & can be shovelled by a bobcat & delivered by a 3/4 ton pickup.

But a 1 cu ft. rock is really quite small. Even a 6 cu. ft. granite rock doesn't look all that big, especially if some of it's below ground level, but it weighs very nearly a ton. When you're dealing with rocks weighing a ton and upwards, each individually selected, then it requires much heavier equipment, more skill & care, & may involve much greater distances. Then it's got to be a different story.

*see http://www.reade.com/Particle_Briefings/spec_gra2.html

If the stones are to be "handsome" in any way the cost might break down so:
Going to the stone yard to select suitable specimens: $65 per hour.
Cost of selected rocks: $400 - $600 per ton.
Delivery: minimum $80
Rental of machinery to unload the rocks at the other end: $275
Deposit on palletes or cages: $25 - $40 each
At this point the "garden stone" is on site waiting for the next stage which must be included in an estimated price otherwise you have a problem and not an answer and all the prices are exclusive of any mark up that anyone intent on making a living would add.
Going into the country to gather the same stones: $ an unheard of amount of money that no one could afford and would do untold damage to the environment.
I have no idea what Gloria Swanson with a pick-up would charge.

umm, that'd be 20 bucks a cube, if she's a pro and has a fast pickup.

In answer to the complaint by the person calling himself Chris74Robinson:

I don't have an answer for people like you because I don't work for people who assume I am 1) ill-informed or poorly educated and 2) trying to cheat them. Mutual respect and trust are vital for any successful business relationship. When somebody starts off in a demanding tone and then regards my utterances with suspicion, I wish them well and refer them to a less scrupulous garden designer such as, say, Gloria Swanson.

Lee

The thread seems to be getting away from what we might better be discussing.

There can obviously be different opinions about the price of stone & what's reasonable.

I think that what people want to know, as a start, is where there are good sources of stone. If you happen to live in the Vancouver area, the following extract from the article in the summer 1970 issue of Davidsonia magazine about the Nitobe Memorial Garden is, I think, interesting -

"Stones for the Garden were selected from various sections of the Lower Mainland: large and small, colorful rocks from near Harrison Lake for the waterfall and stream, stones with character from Britannia Beach for the Tea Garden and local boulders for the margin of the lake.

Professor Mori explained his stone work in a letter to the author written a few days before his untimely death, after returning to Japan: In the Japanese Garden at U.B.C. - " I was most interested in arranging the rocks. I tried a bold treatment with such monotonous stones as used around the lake, doing my best to arrange them with some freshness. I used my own method of arranging the somewhat colorful stones at the waterfall and streams, hoping that people who see them will understand that some aspect of polychrome can be found in a Japanese Garden. In the Tea Garden I used the river rocks which we brought down from Britannia Beach. They are too light and dry now, but after the trees in this part of the garden grow to some size, the rocks will improve in appearance. I will be delighted if the beauty of the Garden is understood gradually by the people who see it.""

I'm not a pro, I'm just thinking about doing various stone projects in my own garden. I like to weight the costs of doing things myself versus hiring a pro to do it. The biggest investment is not usually the materials but in studying up and learning how to do it.

Pat, lots of good threads here on collecting and moving stone; seems insurmountable until you get some techniques and try it and suddenly you are moving garden sized stone around like you were born to it...

I have been very dissapointed by the quality of boulders I find in most stone yards; usually shipped bulk and looking like it. Stone by the cubic foot still sounds like a scam to me, but if it is the garden stone I want and it's in the budget I would buy it...

The old gent who I learned to garden with actually had a stone "nursery" like the ones in Japan, where we would turn the rocks for even light, paint them with vile concoctions to promote lichens, and coddle and wrap anything we were moving like babes in arms. Val got an exorbinant amount for the stones he put in gardens, and rightly so. Rip rap by the cubic foot or anyone espousing purchase of such, should be viewed with some wariness...

Scott

I've started to see boulders sold individually, each with their own price tag. A boulder the size of a large suitcase costs about $100. A boulder the size of a large dog crate costs about $250. These prices are at the stone yard, and I assume it will cost even more to have them delivered to your property.

Businesses that deal in rock & gravel often pile their rock into heaps, graded acording to size. Most such businesses aren't interested in setting aside rocks that may be especially suitable for gardens & most of the guys working there wouldn't be familiar with the difference, but if you go there often enough, you'll probably, from time to time, see a few suitable rocks mixed among the mis-shapen. If you show them which rock or rocks you want, they're generally happy to sell you the ones you point out and load them onto your vehicle. You may of course have to hire somebody who has a suitable vehicle & arrange for help to unload the rocks & to move & place them.

That sounds sensible. What a delightful change...

Thanks to Stittman and Samaki...

Scott