Tuscan or Seymour? Picking a 20mm Decorative Pebble

Decorative pebbles are the one material people choose almost entirely on looks, and fair enough — they are the finishing layer, the part of the garden you actually see. But the two 20mm pebbles we stock suit quite different gardens, and there are a few practical things worth knowing before a cubic metre of stone lands on your driveway.

Tuscan 20mm Pebble — warm and Mediterranean

Tuscan 20mm Pebble is a smooth, rounded pebble in warm, earthy tones. The Mediterranean palette makes it a natural fit for drought-tolerant planting — silvers, greys and olive greens sit beautifully against it.

Use it for: garden beds, pathways, around water features, and as a top dressing on pot plants to keep moisture in and weeds out.

Seymour 20mm Pebble — the river look

Seymour 20mm Pebble is a river pebble from the Seymour region, naturally weathered into smooth, mixed tones. Where Tuscan reads as designed, Seymour reads as found — which is exactly why it works with native planting.

Use it for: garden beds, dry creek beds, and water features, particularly alongside native and ornamental planting where you want the stone to look like it was always there.

Choosing between them

The quickest test: look at your planting. Silver, grey and Mediterranean foliage, rendered walls, terracotta pots — Tuscan. Natives, grasses, timber, a dry creek line running through the bed — Seymour.

If you're still torn, ask for a small sample before you commit. A pebble looks quite different wet, in shade, and under a Melbourne overcast sky than it does in a product photo.

Three practical things

• Depth. 30–50mm is enough for decorative coverage. Deeper is wasted money and makes the bed harder to plant into later.
• Weed matting. Pebbles suppress far less weed growth than mulch does, because light gets between them. Quality weed matting underneath makes the difference between a low-maintenance bed and a weekly chore.
• Pebbles are permanent. Unlike mulch, they never break down — which is the appeal, but it also means removing them later is a shovel-and-barrow job. Be reasonably sure about the bed before you cover it.

Working out the quantity

Area in square metres × depth in metres = cubic metres. A 6m² bed at 40mm needs about 0.25m³. Pebbles are one of the materials people most often over-order, because a cubic metre of stone covers far more ground than a cubic metre of soil ever seems to.

Not just decorative

If the bed has a drainage problem as well as a design problem, look at 7mm Scoria instead — it is lightweight, porous red volcanic rock that improves drainage while still looking deliberate as a ground cover. There is more on that in our post on designing a low-water garden.

Browse the Pebbles collection, or call 1300 21 21 11 if you'd like to see a sample before ordering a full cubic metre.