Time to beautify. Looking for ideas. Pictures would be a great bonus!! Right now I have patches of dirt, patches of grass, patches of mud and patches of broken flagstone.

I've got everything you've got, except the flagstones.

I promise to do better.

I started putting down cardboard in between rows to keep weeds down. When the wind picked it up and tossed it all around the neighborhood, I decided to add some cheap wood bark mulch on top to keep things in place.
It helps with weeds and gives things a neat appearance. If I am running around with a garden hose, I don't end up with a muddy mess. I will see if I can find a picture and figure out how to post it here. Nothing fancy like flagstones or pretty brick walkways though.

In my raised bed gardens, I go with cardboard covered with straw. After they get a bit of walking on and some rain, they don't blow around at all. I use wood chips for other paths, and, back when I started some gardens with the no-till lasagna method, just left the old lawn in between the wider beds.

Do you want to beautify the paths in your veggie garden? Do you have raised beds?

Or are you in need of ideas as to beautifying your paths in/around your flower beds? If so, how are those beds laid out? Raised, framed beds? Free-form borders & beds?

If it's flower bed/border paths, then those flagstones would come in mighty handy! These are just a couple sections of paths I recently laid out using pieces of flagstone I rescued from my neighbor's yard when she moved. They should really be set a bit lower in the soil. But I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Once they're lowered, then it'll make it that much easier for DH to mow over them.


(Click on each thumbnail for larger view)

I tried cardboard covered in pine straw. It worked great for weed control but since this was my first garden, it turns out I put the garden in the exact spot the rain overflow collects and forms a river through it. After the 2nd time the cardboard got washed away I decided to give up and move the garden next year. I still was proud of my results.

WOW! Gardenz, your garden is gorgeous.

quote:

WOW! Gardenz, your garden is gorgeous.

Second that!

Take my advice on what not to do for your paths.

I "tilled" a large area (at bf's insistence that this was the only way to go - what a mess!) Then put in raised beds with new soil, peat moss, & compost -- that part worked fine so far and I've been adding more compost & leaves this fall.

Here's the part not to do: Between the raised beds, I put down weed fabric and topped it with "free" tree mulch from the city. Why do they call it weed fabric??? Because it grows them so well! They're everywhere!

Wish I'd found this website a little sooner.

Thanks! Well, I put down a few layers of newspaper and was planning on putting wood chips down or something, but was thinking that that might create more space for little creepy crawlies to hide, so then I've been thinking just pieces of flagstone. It's hard to visualize what would look good. Oh, and this is for my veggie garden. You can see a bit of the raised bed in my avatar. There's a larger L shaped section, then a smaller 4x4 square that fits into the L (with about a foot between them for walking).

Gardenz, it's beautiful! The little green chair in both pics helps to see how it all fits together. If my perennial bed comes anything close to that!!!

Well I have a brick walk that is over 50 Feet long... I have moss growing in the part of the walk that stays shaded 12 months of the year.


My walk way is in the shade... So I prefer to mow it.. to get to the garden on the other side. But... I have 1 1/2 acres...with 1/2 acre going back to nature... because of the giant trees that make shade! I'm planning on doing more Lasagna beds this fall to get my tomatoes and peppers out of the Black Walnut Zone!

When the paths were laid out 18 years ago, I bought wood chips. As they decomposed, I have used various things: seed pods of the bottle trees that line the street, pieces of bigger wood from the shredded tree trimmings I got from the city, my neighbor's trimmings from his hedge, etc. Even pistachio shells. Once younger DS gave me some shredded pine tree chips. That smelled wonderful! Everything but grass, because to water grass in pathways here would be very impractical.

In the veg garden, thick straw between the growing beds.

Elsewhere, free wood chips either directly on the ground, or on newspaper. Cardboard would last longer.

Sounds like my easiest fix is to pick up the chips, leave down the "weed fabric" , add a layer of newspaper or cardboard, then replace the chips. Now that will be something to look forward to over the winter.

Why bother mulching the paths? I let the grass grow (I just make sure it stays out of the garden beds - the 4x4 ft type) then just mow the paths and use the grass clippings as mulch for the beds.

In my veggie garden walkways, I have ground up leaves.
The leaves are mulching the plants anyway so they just extend to the paths. Weeds stay under control and if I need to pull away mulch from the beds to plant, it just goes in the paths and can be easily returned around the plants as needed.

I'll add something a little more constructive than my first post.
I am planning raised bed/lasagna style and plan to mow grass between those beds. But my other 2 beds I made a path using newspapers then covering them with Pine needles from my bleu Spruce trees. I figured the needles would suppress everything... and it worked great.

I put down newspapers and covered with left over leaves and straw and pine shavings/rabbit bedding. This worked fairly well on everything but the #%&^@ GROUND IVY! But the G.I. only got into one part of the larger garden and the remaining areas I covered with straw, etc have remained weed free for the most part. Nothing I couldn't handle with a walk through hand pulling.