Oh, how we love a great garden path!

Finding ‘your’ path in a Flea market garden

Whether you garden on an estate or a postage stamp, you can create a path. It’s simply the route you take from one place you want to go, to another.

In her book Paths of Desire , Dominque Browning, former editor of House Beautiful, says, “Landscape designers sometimes talk about “desire paths”: the paths traced by people’s habits of movement from one place to another, the paths that make clear where we want to go, and how we want to get there.”

 

Here are some of our best garden path ideas, you can use!  Here, Sydney Minor used blocks of color in her flowers to draw you down the path.

 

For this short path, Sydney places two plain, but aged stones on either side of a aggregate stone,…bricks edges it all to make a antique look with a purpose..

Sydney’s simple path of round stepping stones edged with brick leads from her garden to her granddaughter’s play area.  The upended brick edge, as short as it is, creates dimension and sends it into the next level of style.

 

The round step stones seem to crowd into the brick, combining two different materials in a creative and delightful way. Sydney says, ‘I used old bricks, old home made pavers, gravel and glass rocks to fill in the spaces. Since then, I’ve lined the flower bed side with old broken weathered home made bricks. That’s an arbor that my son built with seats on both sides.”

 

Ann Elias’s path purposely snakes through her garden in a whimsically way, leading from a patio, across the lawn to her garden cottage. Her husband, Mike,  did the work. Ann say, “Mike is finishing the pathway this week.  We purchased this form from Menard’s. Mike mixes up one bag of cement..then fills the form. Smooth outs the top…and well, used Quikrete concrete mix. Sections of this path is over 5 years old and still holding up fine.  It’s really easy to create a great looking pathway.”

See more of Ann’s path and how it was made, here: Stepping stones tricks, plain and fancy

 

 

Becky Norris not only made this path herself from concrete forms, but decorated each one with gems and jewels to match the feminine ‘handmade’ style of her garden. She also pressed leaves and other shapes in to the concrete before it dried.  A brick edge, gives this path some ‘space’ and holds the flowers back.

 

A beautiful and tranquil way to start your day is wandering the paths you create, as you drink a morning cup of coffee or tea.  Paths can be simply utilitarian, to get from one area of your garden to another or whimsical, created just to create interest by winding past a flower bed.  Paths can actually form

the shape of your flower beds or serve as a ‘backbone’ of a sort, and you can plant along it’s length.

 

Christy Morrow’s path to her cottage combines flagstones and gravel, winding gently and keeping a secret around the next corner.  Don’t you want to see what’s there?  The lime green shrub on the left?  It’s a stunning Goldmound Spirea.

 

 

Darcy Franco’s mulched path is edged with quite large granite rocks, dividing the space between her hosta collection and the lawn.  A substantial path can prevent dogs and children from stepping into fragile flowers and scratchy shrubs.

 

 

Mary Peterson  “We are using our old driveway to create a new garden path. It has been like doing a large jigsaw puzzle. This shows the work in progress.”

Cherrie Carine  “This is my favorite path… It starts from my back pasture…along the way there are 2 benches and several large flat boulders to sit on… the path leads to my cabin in the woods, continues on to the little bridge at the pond and finally to the woods… I walk this path most every morning to start my day…..”

 

Need an unusual edge with a lot of character?  Use thrift shop dishes as an edge to your path and match the flowers colors with those in the plates.  That color matching was Barbara Stanley’s genius idea!

More about ‘our style’ garden paths

Stepping stones tricks, plain and fancy

Make a sparkly wine bottle garden edging

Building benches and ‘paths of desire’