Landscaping Ideas – creating a decorative path
There are numerous ways to create an attractive and decorative garden pathway, even when your garden is on the small side. Pathways have both practical and decorative functions: They highlight walking areas in your garden and this helps prevent people from walking through your plants, plus they can be designed with a variety of materials in any number of shapes, to enhance the overall look of your garden.
Creating your own garden pathways depends upon your personal tastes and preferences of course, and it’s a good idea to make sure you choose pathway materials which will compliment the exterior design of your house too. Here are some common materials used in garden pathways:
River stones – These are generally smooth stones that come in various sizes, but those used for garden pathways tend to be six inches or more in width or length. They’re buried into the ground slightly and this causes your pathway to look like the bottom of a river bed. This can be quite attractive, particularly when used to create a winding pathway through your garden.
Concrete slabs or mouldings – These are quite inexpensive, because you can buy ready made slabs, or simply buy a mould and create your own using concrete. You can usually find moulds in different sizes, and with different shapes and designs too. You might decide to create your pathway stones in an octagonal shape for instance, with a butterfly in the centre of each.
There are many interesting things you can do when creating your own garden pathway slabs from concrete too. If for instance, you like to stencil or paint, you can paint your own designs on the stones once the concrete has dried.
You can also put something into the bottom of the mould before pouring your concrete, then once the stone is set you’ll have an unusal item at the top of each stone. What you use is of course up to you, but some creative ideas include putting dried flowers into the bottom of the mould, or putting pieces of coloured glass or pretty rocks into it instead.
Bricks – This is another popular material to use for creating garden paths, and they tend to be used the most in more formal gardens or with brick houses. Even though the shapes are somewhat too rigid for some people, there are actually many different ways to design an attractive garden path using bricks, without it seeming too stiff and predictable.
You can for instance, get bricks of varying colours and create patterns by the way you arrange them in the garden path layout. You can also lay them out in unusual and creative shapes, and then put fragrant herb plants or flowering ground covers between the spaces that are created from your design.
Bark or Wood chips – This isn’t used for creating garden pathways as often as the other materials mentioned, because it has to be refreshed regularly since wood will decompose over time. But it is a wonderful way to create an inexpensive, natural, informal pathway through your garden.
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September 29th, 2009 at 11:00 am
Can bark chips be laid over concrete?! Does anyone know what happens when they start to mulch down?