life, love, and renovation.: Pebble and paving garden path

"But circumstances change. Small causes lead to large effects. New paths are added.
And all anyone can do...is choose".

Kelseyleigh Reber

There is most often that one spot in your garden that really annoys you right? And each time you see it you are reminded that you STILL haven't done anything about it. You berate yourself and swear to rectify it immediately...shortly...in the very near future...next year.

The pathway leading to our lovely new deck is that spot for me. When we moved here it was an old cracked asphalt walkway. Over the years and as the rest of the house became more renovated that path began to look worse and worse.

I decided to concrete over the already defined space. And so a friend dug the asphalt up in preparation. Then I began the tedious process of finding a tradesman and getting quotes. When I finally managed to find someone willing to so such a small area, it was way outside my budget. I thought about laying the concrete myself, and was working up my courage when another idea saved me.

I was looking at photos of the garden of a friend. One of the photo's was of her pathway around the side of her house and I was instantly captured. The photo showed ten large paving slabs laid in a row and surrounded by pebbles. This looked easy, surely it couldn't be that easy? I haven't wasted all this time being annoyed about something that could be sorted in a day could I?

Yes I could.

So off to the landscape depot (Central landscape, sorry Bunnings, it was just a price and convenience thing!)
As luck would have it, there were some end-of-line pavers going for $5 each, rather then $14.95 each that I'd seen at other stores. Hoo-ray!

The pathway is quite wide so we decided on two columns of pavers to help fill the space. As these were end-of-line, we could only get 13 pavers, so had to plan our design around this limitation.

As the area was already defined and mostly flat we only needed to give it a bit of a smooth over to get rid of any bumps in the ground. If you don't have a set space you would have to dig it out and use some kind of compactor to flatten out the earth. But I'm no expert so I can only tell you what I did.

I covered the whole area in Weedmat making sure I overlapped the pieces so there was no space for weeds to grow through. Around the parameter edges is more difficult, and in the end you have to accept that you will need to pull out a few weeds that push up there.

Next The Bloke set out a string line to make sure the pavers were equal distance from the concrete edging that was already there, and from each other. I do love symmetry.

Then the pavers were laid on their allotted spaces. We used one bag of finely crushed gravel to lay under the pavers to make sure they were completely level and there was no wobble when stood upon. A level really helped this process and it was the part that took the bulk of the time.

Once this was complete we shovelled on the pebbles. We used something called Hoki-Poki, which are quite small multi-coloured river pebbles. I had read that the smaller the pebble the easier on bare feet.
Well here in New Zealand we are often barefooted so small pebbles it was.

A going over with the rake to smooth out the pebbles and it was done.

What a difference! I did wonder if the pebbles would float with heavy rain, or if the pavers would move, but they have been down now for around six weeks and we have had torrential rain and the path is still looking great. I don't use weed spray due to the dog and the children spending a lot of time in the garden, especially now it is summertime here, so I have had to pull a few weeds, but not many. I may have spend 10 minutes in total over the last six weeks on weeding.

The finished path (the few dark spots are bark from the garden beds caused by the dog running through chasing the ball. Annoying, but great job for the kids when they want to earn a little cash, they come out and pick it up and throw it back into the garden.

The before shot is not available due to a technical hitch... but just imagine a cracked, weed-filled path so unattractive that visitors chose to walk across the lawn instead of using it!!

The area covered in Weedmat, and if you look closely, a string line down the middle of the path.