I have always loved French gardens. Like most things French, they are usually created with both simplicity and elegance. I first fell in love with pea gravel while strolling through many of the gardens in Paris. It’s very pretty, very inexpensive and saves a lot of time and energy, as it requires very little maintenance. I have a tiny spot in my garden where I tried to grow grass for 3 years. My efforts were always futile. The blazing sun burned the grass if I didn’t water it constantly, and whatever did grow, grew with great reluctance because of the stubborn clay-like soil. So this year, I decide to create a French garden. It was pretty simple and I’m going to show you how I did it….

The first thing we did was rake up the grass that was in the area. This was not as easy as I thought it would be, but we did our best.

Next, we went to Home Depot and brought home 20 bags of pea gravel. Much to our dismay, that barely covered the area. After a few more trips during the next few weeks, we finally poured around 40 bags at a cost of around $60. The problem we had after that, was some persistent grass which continued to pop up and made our pea gravel look terrible! I tried weed killer, but that didn’t work. Finally, we tried RoundUp, which dried up the grass in about a week. We bought it at Home Depot and you just spray it on the offending grass or weeds.

I found these vintage folding chairs at an estate sale in town for $5.00 A little white Krylon Spray Paint and they were as good as new.

I found a bistro table in the clearance aisle at Target for $20. It was black metal, so I spray-painted it white. The flower pot I found for $1.00 at a tag sale. Finally, I planted the big urn I have with flowers and there you have it! A French garden for around $100!

The perfect spot for reading a book or sipping a cocktail in the evening. I love it!