Tag Archives: how to lay a path

Back indoors again

28 Sunday Feb 2010

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Arrrrrrrgggghggeeeeeuuuuuucchchhhhhhhgggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmfffffff

I HATE February!

Especially THIS February! 1

The gods of weather up there are looking down at me and laughing themselves sick. Right, they say. We’ve given her ice, snow, hail, sleet and torrential rain on a Biblical scale for the last three weeks: now let’s give her a nice sunny Saturday. Look! Lovely! Warm temperatures, and no rain at all! We won’t even make it windy! Let’s make it that exact Saturday she’s got to stay indoors because it’s her little girl’s birthday party and not even she can come up with an excuse that can get her out of that so she can go gardening.

Then on Sunday, when there’s nothing much going on and gardening to do, let’s unleash the forces of hell on her! Yay! Lashing rain – tick! Howling gales – tick! The kind of temperatures that freeze your nose off as soon as you look outdoors – tick! Oh, what fun we had!

Harrumph. I’ve had to retreat back into the greenhouse again, as you may have guessed. I do actually like my greenhouse, but it is so frustrating not to be able to get outside.

Anyway: enough moaning. There’s been a lot going on in both greenhouses just lately (wonder why that could be?). The one in my garden is chocablock with seedlings after I (again) started sowing a little earlier than I should. And up at the allotment there are changes afoot.

For the last six years since I put the greenhouse up there has been a fine crop of dandelions pushing their way up through what passes for a path (trodden earth, doncha know… that’s code in gardening books for gardeners who couldn’t be bothered to lay a proper path, and is almost always a very unsatisfactory option to choose). It’s extremely irritating, especially as they seed themselves into the border, occasionally grow big enough to trip you over and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

So I’ve been spending the last few sessions up there fixing the problem. And here’s what I did.


Before I started: see what I mean about that path? Not really up to scratch, and certainly not model-allotment stuff. You can even see the failed previous attempt at path-making there. Let nobody ever accuse me of seeing a job through from start to finish.

Anyway: the dandelions were history after a bit of brisk hoeing, and I was ready to go.

First job was to hold the borders back with a smart edging of gravel boards. Actually they’re the gravel boards you can (just about) see in the above picture after cleaning up. Recycling and allotmenteering were made for each other.

The weed-suppressing membrane is recycled too: a gardening job I did where I had to rip up a membrane someone put down over a potato bed after planting (don’t ask…) I’ve stapled it on as insurance against pesky weeds pushing through the gap – a lesson hard-learned from previous experience.

Sand was next: this evened out the bumpy bits nicely. I used a load of sand I had left over from doing the path in the garden (see? Nothing goes to waste around here!) and trod it down with the gardeners’ soft-shoe shuffle (you’ll see the same dance wherever lawns are to be laid: pretend you’re an Egyptian mummy swaddled from head to foot in bandages and then try to move your feet up and down and you’ll have it). Once raked and levelled with another board dragged over the surface it was ready to go.

Ta-daaaah! Almost the finished article: my camera ran out of batteries before I got the sand brushed into the cracks to finish it off. I would have mixed cement with the sand had I been really serious as the weeds will still grow through the cracks using plain sand – but at least I’ll be able to pull them out easily.

By the way the concrete slabs are recycled too: I picked them up from our local primary school after they had a patio lifted.

So all this cost me… well…. nothing. Apart from about three or four half-hour sessions down the lottie. Not bad, eh? Wish I’d done it years ago now…

1: except the crocuses, I like those. And all those buds and shoots I was wittering on about the other day.

The path to enlightenment #2

27 Tuesday Oct 2009

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Back to the grindstone: you may remember I had a two-inch layer of MOT on the path which once I’d got the capricious and frankly malicious whacker plate under some semblance of control I managed to compress to a pretty good solid layer.

Step 5: start mixing your mortar. I went for a 1:4 mix of cement to sand which seemed to work pretty well. You slosh a bit of water in and then squirt some washing up liquid after it – this keeps the mortar elastic – before using the oldest spade you have to mix it up until it’s the sloppy side of solid – about the texture of blancmange. This is the best way of ruining gardening tools I know.

Step 6: Use the mortar to set your edging bricks. At this point I thought I’d better start taking some pictures of my somewhat erratic progress.

This bit isn’t quite as bad as it seems: I used pegs and string to mark the outer edge of the path so I had a line to follow and then it was a matter of using a rubber mallet to knock the bricks in place.

Step 7: go and do something else for a day while it all dries.

Step 8: it’s time to play with the sand you ordered, if the neighbour’s kids haven’t got there first. A 2″ layer inside the brick edging, if you please.


Step 9: level the sand and dry-lay the bricks, making sure they’re level in every direction – I put a gentle camber on mine from one side to the other to drain the water off.

At this point Joe Swift produced a natty little bit of wood, with the profile of a brick cut out of each side so it “hung” on the sides of the path and acted as a template to smoothe your sand level.

I thought this looked like a good idea, so gave it a go. Sadly, I quickly realised the catch: it does assume that all your bricks are identical. In some misguided attempt to be a bit more environmentally sound we’d bought our bricks reclaimed at an auction, so they were every possible size, shape and thickness you can imagine and I had to lay them all individually, using my little rubber mallet and taking Bloomin’ Ages.


Still, it’s starting to take shape and look ever so slightly like a proper path by now.

Step 10: Mix some more 1:4 mortar but don’t put the water in this time. Make sure it’s not raining, or even a bit damp, and use one of those little pointing trowels to feed the dry mix into the gaps. Then follow up with a stiff brush so there’s not even a little bit left on the surface of the bricks (where it will set in a grey and depressing mat of concrete). This is why it’s essential your bricks should be dry before you start this bit.

By the way, the grey and depressing bits on the bricks above were already there – see reclaimed bricks comment earlier.

Now, I was lucky and it rained the night after I did this so all the mortar was beautifully watered in and set almost straight away. But if it doesn’t rain, you’ll have to do this yourself with a hose set on sprinkler – don’t blast water at it all or you’ll wash out all the mortar and have to start again.

By the way, being a very amateur bricky, I cheated.


I have three holes in my path: here, where the four arms of the cross meet (there are two little side-paths off to my shed and my greenhouse – oh, no, I’m not over-ambitious, oooooh no) and at each end, where the squares I made under the gates in and out were, ahem, not exactly square.

One of the many things I discovered through making this path is the reason why brick paths are always an odd number of bricks across. The width of my path, for reasons lost in the mists of history, is six bricks across for the main bit and four across for the side paths. This doesn’t work, and my maths isn’t up to working out why. So I just fudged it. A little concrete and a few pretty pebbles should fill in the hole nicely.

Doncha just love amateur DIY enthusiasts? What can I say – I make mistakes so you don’t have to. Still, I got a pretty good new brick path, and I learned an awful lot of things – chief among which was that It’s Never as Easy as it Looks On TV.

The path to enlightenment #1

25 Sunday Oct 2009

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We’ve gone a bit potty with the hard landscaping lately. First it was the gravel, which smartened things up around here no end, and then it was laying the brick path down the middle of my working area, which for the last seven years has been reduced to a muddy channel each winter, driving us crazy and causing not a few spectacular somersaults/twisted ankles/soggy behinds/caustic and very bitter swearwords.

So to spare our children further expanding their vocabulary we decided to invest in a Proper Path. Fortified by Joe Swift’s enthusiastic if high-speed advice on an edition of GW a bit earlier in the season I set to work.

Step 1: dig out channel for path about six inches below ground level (the only easy bit in the whole process, I now realise).

Step 2: bash in some little pegs and use a long spirit level between them to make sure they’re all the same height – viz. with the tops about 2″ above ground level. This is Much More Tricky than they make it look on telly and takes a Bloody Long Time.

Step 3: get a lot of builders’ bags full of heavy stuff delivered. First into the wheelbarrow and off down the garden was M.O.T., which when I were a nipper used to be called hardcore, but I think that word has a different meaning nowadays. Anyway, this is what they use under roads apparently: it’s made out of grey chippings of what looks like old bits of concrete and though it’s very heavy it settles down very satisfyingly to form a pretty impenetrable pad at the base of your path.

Step 4: put down a 2″ layer and then hire a whacker plate (which I’m sure has a more technical name) to rattle the teeth out of your head making sure it’s all well compacted down.

This turned out to be unexpectedly entertaining as the moment I turned it on the whacker plate set off at a terrific speed across the garden. I hung on for dear life as it headed for the herbaceous border trying to keep up and steer it away from the fence – do you have any idea how heavy those things are? About two inches shy of the first quivering plant I finally located which switch was the choke and managed to slow the engine down to a more modest chug. By which point my other half was on the floor in tears of laughter and I was a shaking wreck.

So at this point, I retired traumatised for a cup of tea and a lie down before tackling the next bit. Of which, more later (with pictures, this time).