Creating the Pathways - Part 15 of our garden makeover

Garden transformation Part 15 – A long walk.

We’ve ended up with 237 feet/72.2 metres of pathways, mainly the consequence of having such a long garden! The raised vegetable beds have also contribute though. It’s certainly good for our step count, especially if you keep forgetting your tools!

The vegetable beds were the first part of the garden to be designed, there are six of them and we wanted descent pathways around them.

The main priority was to make sure we could comfortably wheel the wheelbarrow around.

June 2014

As we both hate mowing grass, we had no intentions of keeping any lawn. Each time we took a little more turf up was a happy moment. As soon as we’d finished building the raised beds, we took the turf up in between them. We then laid a membrane, to put gravel on that we’d brought with us from our last garden. This turned out not to be terribly practical, but was a good temporary measure. And it meant we didn’t have to mow between the beds.

It was a couple more years before we we started on the rest of the paths. We were too busy building walls!

October 2016

The first pathway we did properly, was almost in the middle of the garden.

In April we had just finished putting up our new greenhouse on its permanent base. We had put a slender border down the side of it to plant lavender. We chose a compact variety called ‘Lavenite Petit’ and we ordered it from Norfolk Lavender. Unfortunately they don’t appear to sell it anymore, but they do have plenty of others and we were very pleased with the plants.

As well as my husband and I loving lavender, the bees love it too. As we intended to grow lots of food we were going to need our busy little friends to pollinate everything.

The lavender border formed one side of the path and we lined the other side with old solid red bricks that we had brought with us.

We concreted a narrow trench, ready to lay the bricks on their edge.

For the path itself we dug out 4” of soil, put a membrane down, filled it with hardcore and compacted it with a wacker plate.

This was not particularly attractive, but was a functional path, until we laid the stone on top.

November 2016

We started the next part of the path at the very end of the garden. We had just finished building the Great Wall, which runs the full length of the garden on the left-hand side. The compost bins and log store are situated at the very end so we would need a proper path all the way down.

Again we repeated the procedure of brick lined and compacted hardcore. We got as far as the end of the log store that year.

March 2017

It was March before we started work on the pathways again. With a combination of refining soil and planting up the White Garden, Christmas and winter weather.

April 2017

In April we finally got the path finished to the beginning of the white garden.

The pond that we’d dug and built in 2016, was finally lined and filled.

The path along side it couldn’t be finished though, as we had decided to build a summer-house in between the white garden and pond.

Building the summer house was quite far down the priority list, but we needed to get the base in to be able to finish the garden, and of course the pathways. In the meantime it would also give us a seating area in the garden.

May 2017

We put the foundations of the summer house in, including a drainpipe to take the amenities. This allowed us to finally finish the path along the pond.

June 2017

To allow us to finish the paths all the way to the patio, we continued the amenities pipe right down the garden.

Remembering to run a rope through it!!

July 2017

We were now finally able to finish the pathways around the outside of the raised beds

August 2017 – The nice bit!

We bought the stone from Huws Gray, deciding on Indian stone with fossils in. It has some amazing patterns.

We started at the very end by the compost bins. With the shape of the garden going right down to a point it meant lots of cutting. We finished to the beginning of the white garden.