Decorative Garden Pathways…

June 9, 2009

Gardening
There are many ways to create an attractive and decorative garden pathway, even when your garden seems a bit small. Pathways have both practical and decorative functions: They designate walking areas around your garden and this helps prevent people from walking straight 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 yard and garden areas.

How you decide to create your own garden pathways will depend 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 home 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 areas.

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Garden Tip...

Perhaps the best soil for general potting purposes, and the kind most extensively used by florists, is a mixture of equal parts of decayed sods, and well-rotted stable manure, and occasionally, especially if the sod is clayey, a little sand is added.
~ James Sheehan
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Concrete moldings - These are quite inexpensive, because you can buy ready made stones, or simply buy a mold and create your own pathway stones from it using concrete. You can usually find molds 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 center of each.

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Garden Tip...

It is a mistake to crowd too many plants into a basket, if they grow they will soon become root-bound, stunted, and look sickly. If the hanging basket be of the ordinary size, one large and choice plant placed in the centre with a few graceful vines to droop over the edges, will have a better effect when established and growing, than if it were crowded with plants at the time of filling. Hanging baskets being constantly suspended, they are exposed to draughts of air from all sides, and the soil is soon dried out, hence careful watching is necessary in order to prevent the contents from becoming too dry. If the moss appears to be dry, take the basket down and dip it once or twice in a pail of water, this is better than sprinkling from a watering-pot. In filling hanging baskets, or vases of any kind, we invariably cover the surface of the soil with the same green moss used for lining, which, while it adds materially to the pleasing appearance of the whole, at the same time prevents the soil from drying out or becoming baked on the surface.
~ James Sheehan
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There are many fun things you can do when creating your own garden pathway stones 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 mold 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 mold, or putting pieces of colored 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 colors 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 a naturalized, informal pathway through your garden inexpensively.