Summer is here! Finally, after months of still using our super thick winter duvet and wearing thick jumpers it seems like the good weather is here to stay for a while. But instead of resting and lying outside in the sunshine with a nice glass of something refreshing and cold, we’re taking up half of our garden, building a fence and replacing our driveway.
We’ll be sharing more on all of that soon (at the moment everywhere is just covered in dirt) but something else we’ve decided to do is finally tackle our horrible garden path that leads up to the front of our home.
It’s a complete mess.
It’s not only uneven and ugly, it’s also slowly dissolving into millions of little gritty stones that get stuck under your shoes and then end up covering most of the hallway. Not exactly an ideal situation, especially if you have wooden floors as we do.
Whilst the path rises a bit towards the house, there are no steps up to the front door/ porch which means that we’re left with one huge step up into the porch and inevitably back out and down again. It’s that bad, that we’ve even had visitors literally fall out of the front door – although that may have also had something to do with that evenings wine consumption!
A new porch is also on our to-do list (ours is actually falling away from the rest of the house), but as they’re quite pricey and don’t really improve the quality of living in our home, it always seems to slip down our list of priorities and is still a project that will have to wait a while longer.
The current plan is to remove all of the tarmac and loose edging stones, before adding a new hardcore base, landscape membrane to stop weeds and then pave a nicely curved path up to the front door which a step or two at the end to make it easier to get in and out of the house.
For the paving, we’re thinking of something classic block paving. It may not be the most exciting design choice, but we think it will suit the house and it’ll definitely be much nicer to walk along than our current bumpy tarmac path!
For the less important path leading down the side of the house, we’re currently planning a gravel surface to match the (also yet to be done) driveway at the back of the house. It’s obviously cheaper than paving it and we think that using the same finishes should nicely tie in the front and back gardens and give a more coherent look, as well as making it clear which is the main path that people should be using.
As with most projects around here, the plan is to build the path ourselves, too – although we may decide to have the edges of the path installed by a builder as these should be laid in concrete to stop them from moving over time. Because our path is curved, it’ll probably also be one of the trickiest parts of the project. I guess it’s always good to know your limits and anything that makes our lives easier has got to be a good thing.
Have you ever laid a garden path? What projects would you rather leave to the professionals? Do you have any other paving suggestions for us? Our design is fairly basic (and probably a bit boring), so we’d love to know if you have any other suggestions!
Gerry says
Did you ever get round to doing the path? I haven’t found a blog post on it.
Christine says
Sadly not. It was on our list of projects for this year but then everything turned out differently than planned. We did manage to replace the driveway, though. You can read about it here.
Cx
Matthew Coussens says
Using a gravel for the path beside the house is a great idea, I like the use of a lighter colour contrasting against the front path and the flowerbed.
Christine says
Fingers crossed it works out as well as we’ve planned. To tie everything together, we’re going to be using the same gravel for the path as for the driveway (which is first on the list). We’d probably better get a move on if we want it finished before the colder weather kicks in!
Cx
Lauren says
Hi,
We’re also planning a redesign of our garden and paths. How did you create the drawing plan in your blog post? Is it using a piece of software? I think it would really help to be able to see a birds eye view of our ideas.
Just to add that I really enjoy your blog. We’re doing up a 3 bed Victorian terrace and it’s interesting reading about someone else’s journey! I found your post about solving creaky heating pipes the night before our carpets were laid upstairs and had a frantic session To sort out – it worked!
Christine says
Thanks Lauren! So happy to hear that you managed to get your heating pipes sorted, too. Perfect timing! It’s probably still one of our cheapest but favourite home improvements to date!
The drawing in the post is a mixture of a line drawing that I had of our house (which a friend did for me) in which I just dropped some pictures of textures using the computer. I wish there was a fancy tool that I could recommend, but usually I plan things just on pen and paper and that works fine for me. Try and draw it to scale – 1:100 is usually easiest (1 cm on your drawing is 1 m in real life). For calculating the amount of paving stones you’ll need, we’ve been using the tools that the manufactures have on their sites. Hope that’s some help!
Cx
Ellen says
Great plan! What will you use for your steps?
Christine says
Thanks Ellen! We’re currently thinking that the steps will be made out of the same paving as the rest of the path. In an ideal world it would make much more sense to have the porch replaced first (boo to budgets), then we could possibly have the floor of the porch and the steps made out of the same material.
For now though, it’s paving all the way.
Cx
Ellen says
I hadn’t thought of that! Great idea to make the steps something you can redo again later when you’re ready to tackle the porch. I was thinking y’all could really rock concrete slab pouring, similar to the way people all over the internet these days are pouring slabs for countertops. Of course, that would be so much heavier and difficult to undo.
Christine says
We’d thought about concrete, too, Ellen! As we’re pretty certain a few things will have to be adjusted as soon as we get round to replacing the porch, we discarded the option early on though.
Cx
Louise says
That looks like an improvement well worth the effort. It is a rather high step… and depressing tarmac.
I have noticed that english paths are often laid in concrete, quite interesting that you can do that. Not so much ground frost I guess? I wonder, could you not skip the concrete and be able to control the entire process yourself? Garden paths here doesn’t move, so I suppose the same foundation could be used in England?
The “nordic” version is to dig out 20 cm. Make sure there is a slight slope away from the house, 1 cm per metre or so. Cloth in the bottom. Refill 15 cm with crushed gravel, fraction 0-45mm. Fill the rest with the smallest fraction, “sand”, 0-4mm, this is also used for the refill between the stones. Also vibrate and water down the crushed layer. Your small path could be done in a day, after the digging is done =)
I love the way your paths winds, both to the front door and back entrance. Is it gravel under the plantings? I wonder if that could be one too many types of stone? red brick on the house, red concrete pavers, grey gravel path and red gravel under plantings… Maybe change a strip on each sides of the path of walkable ground covers? Then not so many material would meet directly and you would remove that annoying “grass meets pavers and want to eat it”- effect? I am thinking ivy, maybe something perennial but then you would need a stepping stone onto the lawn bit.
Usually when somethings looks like the tarmac it just brings down all the planting and make everything messy, when you get the new paving I think you will more open to loose plantings. It is very good that you have a good basic plan that can adapt and evolve, when you want to complicate it more, with pink roses climbing the wall … =)
Christine says
You’re right, the tarmac is really depressing!
Essentially the “nordic” way is the same as it is here, except that the edges are concreted down (which is what’s recommended here by all paving suppliers).
The paths we’re planning are roughly the shape of the ones that are there now. They’re both slightly winding, which we really like, too. I’m always worried about mixing too many materials and colours, especially in a garden where you have the colourful planting. I should have put a note on the drawing (and some of our design choices are still open to discussion) and all of the areas under and around the planting are mulch and bark chips. We already put some down last year in the area in front of the wall and it still looks tidy and is great in keeping the weeds away. You’re right about the paver meets grass situation and we’ll have to rethink our planning there a bit.
To be honest we’ve not thought much about the planting yet. It’s something that I always feel totally overwhelmed with as there’s just so much choice. I’d love a pretty garden though, so once we’ve got our messy building work out of the way I’m sure you’ll find me in garden centre instead of a builders yard… for a while anyway ;)
Cx
Louise says
I like bark chips too, that sounds very nice. Maybe edge the gravel path with the same stones that you use for the path? That could make it more cohesive. I think I would have chosen grey stones and grey gravel, it will work with the slate and the mortar in the wall. I think the look of the slate to the garage is very nice. And wouldnt silvery foliage be very pretty with the house? the lavender you have on the pic looks right at home! I know what you mean with the plants, just buy everything you see and worry about it later, there are always more terracotta pots to buy =)
Christine says
Edging the path in the same material as the path is a great idea – we’d not thought of that and will definitely incorporate it in our plan! We’re not 100% sure on the colours for the path and gravel, but you’re right that the colours should match each other and go well with the brick and slate of the house.
Cx