The garden walkway

It's funny how sometimes a small project can grow. When I thought about getting a beautiful arbor for the entrance to my garden, all I thought about was how much it was going to really pop. It would make the garden entrance look so beautiful and inviting. It would make the yard look more complete. It was a one day project, that was it.

It was perfect... but, it made that side of the yard look messy. There was a scraggly lawn attempting to grow around it. There was also a half attempt at a perennial bed that I had thrown a few random plants in. To me, it seemed weird to have a grand entryway with no walkway. After a week or two, I realized it was driving me nuts and something would have to be done. And like that, my one day project turned full summer project.

The first thing I needed was some inspiration. Its such an odd space. It's off to the side and in front of the driveway. My biggest problem was that I could envision where I wanted the walkway, just not what to do on the right side. The space is so big, I just could really picture doing a huge garden there. At the same time, I didn't really want lawn there, because then I'd have to mow it and go over whatever walkway I had to get to the other side to mow.

I started to mark out the walkway. You can see the odd space I have there on the right. Plus, it had been home to our picnic table. Not that we picnic there, but the kids play on there and have snacks there sometimes. I had to think about what could go under that and be low maintenance.

I pushed on. Next thing I knew, I had shoveled, hoed, and pulled out all the grass and weeds. I took a metal rake and I smoothed out the dirt the best I could and I cut and pulled about a million roots.


After many pinterest and google searches of "garden walkway". I finally decided that we really couldn't afford this new project I had in mind and that I was going to have to be thrifty. My first attempt was to find flat stones and lay them out. But, I quickly realized this would take me forever and it really wasn't giving the look I wanted.

I finally decided I would make fake cobblestones using the Quickcrete(R) walk maker. I read up and I thought it would give me the look I was looking for, but cheaper, and I could do it myself. Hahaha. I packed the kids up in the car, drove to Lowes and bought the mold and five 50lb bags of concrete. Looking back, that is hilarious.

While the kids were doing "rest time" I got out the wheel barrel, grabbed my hoe, a large measuring cup and mixed up the concrete. I bought the non-quick dry since it was $1.20 a bag. I mixed and mixed and laid all 6 bags (I had one bag of quick dry 50 lbs already at home). This is how far I got. Had I actually thought about this, and realized that 6 bags only covered the inside of the arbor, I may have quit. But I loved how it was looking. I even had all my kids put their hand prints on a mold.

 

I tried adding some colorful glass, and quickly realized it didn't look good, so I quit. And the project continued. 

I got a 5 hour, kid free window one day and made it this far. This was around 29 bags of concrete later. I had to work that night and I could barely hold anything. My arms were jelly and I quickly wished I'd rented a cement mixer. I was only about half done. :{

Knowing that I wouldn't be getting another 5 hour kid free window, I got antsy and wanted to see what it would look like done. I needed some motivation to get it done. So I laid some mulch on the sides and started to see what it would look like!! I also threw in a few more plants to the sad perennial bed.

Next we got a huge rain storm and pretty much all my mulch washed out. So I had to start again with the mulch. About 50 + bags of 50-80 lbs of concrete later (I later used 80 lb bags to help make it go faster), it was complete. 

I dumped black mulch on top of the concrete stones and using a large broom, filled in all the crevices. This made it look so much better. Any imperfections weren't showing and it helped make the concrete stones look like they were part of the landscape, instead of sticking up.

In the end I put another path to a little cast iron garden bench for the kids my neighbor gave us as a house warming present. I planted a hydrangea and some coral bells. I decided that a huge perennial bed it was :) It also took me the next couple big rain storms to see where I needed some help with stones so that I could prevent wash out.