Enter the area and choose the job. We’ll set a practical depth and tell you how much pea gravel to order.
Pea gravel is naturally weathered stone, tumbled smooth and sorted to roughly 3/8 inch. The smooth, rounded shape is why it feels good underfoot and why it fails at jobs crushed stone handles easily.
Angular crushed stone locks together — the broken faces catch on each other and the layer behaves almost like a solid. Round stone cannot do that. It rolls, spreads and finds the lowest point available. Every decision about where to use pea gravel and how to contain it follows from that one property.
It is a poor driveway surface for the same reason. Car tyres push rounded stone aside instead of compressing it, so you get ruts down the wheel tracks and berms along the edges. If you love the look, the workaround is a compacted crusher run base with a thin pea gravel top layer and firm edging — and accepting that you will rake it.
For a path or garden bed, 2 inches over landscape fabric is right. Deeper feels like walking in sand: your foot sinks, the stone shifts, and it becomes tiring rather than pleasant. Two inches also covers the fabric properly, which is what stops weeds.
A patio or seating area takes 2 to 3 inches, over a compacted base if furniture will sit on it. Chair legs sink into pea gravel alone.
Playgrounds are the exception, and the numbers are much larger. Pea gravel is an approved loose-fill safety surface, but its protective depth is set by how far a child can fall. As a guide, 9 inches of pea gravel is rated for roughly a 5 foot fall height and 12 inches for around 10 feet — and that is compressed depth, so you install deeper and let it settle. Measure the fall height of your equipment, check it against the current ASTM F1292 and CPSC public playground guidance, and set the depth from that rather than from what looks like enough. The calculator will take any depth you enter, but it cannot know your fall height.
Dog runs are one of its best uses. It drains fast, does not hold odour the way bark does, and is gentle on paws — though it needs rinsing occasionally and a border to keep it in.
Garden beds and around downspouts work well because drainage is the whole point and nothing needs to bear weight. Fire pit surrounds are another good fit, since stone does not burn and the rounded surface is comfortable to stand on.
Between pavers and along a house foundation it does its job quietly for years. What it will not do is stay put on any slope over a gentle grade, or survive being driven on. If either applies, use crushed stone.
Every successful pea gravel installation has a hard border — steel or aluminium edging, pavers, timber, or a trench cut into firm turf. Without one the stone spreads outward, the layer thins, the fabric shows through and weeds come back.
Budget for edging when you budget for stone. It is a small line item next to a delivery charge, and it is the difference between topping up every spring and topping up once a decade.
Bagged pea gravel is convenient and expensive, running $4 to $8 for a half cubic foot bag. Bulk runs roughly $30 to $60 per ton before delivery.
The break-even lands early. A 100 square foot path at 2 inches deep needs about 0.6 cubic yards — around 33 half-cubic-foot bags, which is a car full of heavy lifting and usually more money than a bulk delivery of the same amount. Bags make sense below roughly 10 cubic feet, or when a truck genuinely cannot reach the site.
Volume is area multiplied by depth. Weight is that volume multiplied by the material's density.
volume = area × depth
tons = volume (cu ft) × 96 lb/cu ft ÷ 2000
order = volume × 1.1Density used: 96 lb per cubic foot. Rounded pea gravel, typical 92–100 lb/ft³ dry. Actual delivered weight varies with moisture and stone size, so treat tonnage as an estimate and confirm with your supplier.
The recommended order adds 10% on top. Material settles, ground is never perfectly flat, and a second delivery costs far more than a little extra pea gravel.
Bag count assumes 0.5 cu ft bags, rounded up to whole bags.
About 125 sq ft at 2 in deep. Pea gravel is lighter than crushed stone, so a ton of it goes slightly further than a ton of driveway gravel.
2 in over a compacted base. Deeper than that and it feels loose and shifty underfoot, because the rounded stones do not lock together the way crushed stone does.
Pea gravel is rounded and comfortable underfoot, which suits paths, patios and dog runs. Crushed stone has angular faces that lock together when compacted, which is why driveways and paver bases use it. Rounded stone will not hold a compacted shape.
Only at proper safety depth. Loose-fill playground surfacing needs 9 in after settling, and 12 in under equipment taller than 8 ft. Check the fall height of your equipment before ordering less.