15 Easy Ways to DIY Your Garden Paths
Pathways add charm to the yard! They’re essential parts of a cohesive garden design. Depending on how you want the garden to look, use a natural, wild style or a formal, geometric one. You can do it yourself! Start with one of these 15 easy methods to create your garden paths, from former landscaper Jerad Bryant.
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Gardening can be a lot of work! That’s why tips and tricks that save time and effort are indispensable. Why work twice as hard when you can complete the same task with less labor?
Pathway-making is one such activity that can be incredibly difficult or as easy as pie. You can install bricks, pavers, and concrete, or you can put woodchips down and call it a day. There are endless options for pathway making, and many work well in a variety of garden styles.
Natural, organic materials lend themselves well to a natural look; wood, mulch, and groundcover plants are excellent for woodland, cottage, and beach-style gardens. Concrete, pavers, and stones are more formal; they work well in yards with lots of hardscaping and structures.
You may also choose to blend different styles for a unique presentation! Perhaps you’d like a formal pathway to line a forested yard. Or, you’d prefer a curvy, natural walkway to add organic shapes to a linear space with square hedges and perfect lines. No matter what you’re thinking, these 15 styles of DIY garden paths provide a wealth of options for you to choose from.
Continuous Compost
This revolutionary method allows you to recycle your waste where you walk! Rather than making a compost pile in the backyard, you’ll layer garden clippings, weeds, and carbon-rich waste where you’d like to add new DIY garden paths.
Continuous composting is perfect for yards with plenty of waste, like lawn clippings, fall leaves, and plant trimmings. You can continuously add the debris to the paths, cover it with straw, leaves, or chips, and let it decay in place. Avoid using kitchen scraps or other smelly waste products to keep foul aromas away.
Continuous compost works well near raised or in-ground beds; the decomposing materials leach nutrients and microbes into the surrounding soils. Use a dry layer on top, like straw or woodchips, so it’s easy to walk on top. You don’t want to step into spongy, wet leaves!
Woodchips
Woodchips are cheap and easy to spread as a DIY garden path! They cover the ground to protect plant roots and insulate tender microbes. Many cities offer free chip drops where arborists and landscaping companies deliver free loads of woodchips. Consult your city’s or county’s website to see if they have a budget-friendly program.
Affordable and beneficial for the garden, chips are ideal for filling new paths and rejuvenating old ones. They last many months before fully decomposing, and when they do, they add beneficial nutrients, structure, and microbes to the soil.
You’ll need to rejuvenate your chip paths once a year. Fall or spring are good seasons for rejuvenation. Simply add a new layer two to three inches deep on top of the old one.
Fall Leaves
As summer ends and autumn begins, leaves change colors and fall from deciduous trees and shrubs throughout the U.S. These fallen leaves are ideal for making paths. They’re an organic material, and they’re free and abundant!
Fall leaves are also beneficial for local wildlife. Beneficial insects like pollinators and predators overwinter in leaf litter. Adults, pupae, and larvae may overwinter; it all depends on the type of bug and its life cycle. Offering plenty of leaf litter helps them create cozy homes for the cold winter months.
Other leaves, like pine and spruce needles, are also ideal for laying on paths. Use whatever you have available, or ask your neighbors if they have extra leaves they don’t mind sharing.
Wood Beams and Logs
Like woodchips, beams, and logs are excellent materials for creating DIY garden paths and walkways. You can cut large logs into thin, circular pieces, or lay straight wood beams in a formal pattern. Use wood from trees in your yard, or find a budget-friendly shop near you.
The best wood for outdoor projects is rot-resistant. Source long-lasting species like cedar, Douglas fir, and catalpa. Teak, walnut, and chestnut are some other great options.
Stain wood with a garden-friendly staining product to further boost how long it lasts. The protective coat prevents moisture and bugs from wearing down the planks and logs.
Living Mulch
Gardeners with green thumbs should consider planting groundcovers! Some durable plants tolerate foot traffic, making them ideal for filling walkways. There are plenty of vigorous options for areas with sun, shade, or dappled sunlight.
Creeping thyme, Corsican mint, and clover excel in areas with full sun. They’re soft and perfect for walking on, and they’re durable enough to tolerate regular foot traffic. Others, like blue star creeper, are ideal in the shade.
Some groundcovers require mowing to stay short, while others are naturally low-growing. Choose low-growing specimens if you’d rather not mow the yard frequently during the growing season.
Stepping Stones
Stepping stones are great for creating hard areas to walk on while retaining a natural look in the garden. Flagstone is one material you can use that’s relatively affordable, though there are dozens more to choose from.
Use irregular stones for a natural style; use perfect square ones for a formal one. Sandstone, shale, and limestone are similar to flagstone and work well in paths and walkways.
Because these stone pieces are irregular, they won’t perfectly line up to form walkways on their own. They require other materials, like mulch, gravel, or groundcovers, to fill the spaces in between.
Stones and Moss
Moss is an excellent plant-like material to plant between stepping stones in shady sites. It thrives during the cool months of spring and fall, though it remains in place and covers the soil during summer. Moss dries and stays dormant when it’s hot, and it comes alive after rainfall and cool temperatures return.
Moss isn’t a great choice for sunny sites, as it needs partial or full shade to thrive. Consider Scotch or Irish mosses instead of true mosses for sunny gardens. They’re moss-like plants with tiny chartreuse or green leaves.
You can transplant chunks of moss and let them spread, or make a moss milkshake and spread it throughout the site. Grab some mosses and place them in a blender with two cups of milk, yogurt, beer, or potato water. Blend thoroughly, then spread the “milkshake” between the stones.
Stones and Grass
In sunny sites, you can have turf grasses grow in between stepping stones. Sow seeds on the bare soil patches, or cut up rolled turf into pieces and transplant them. Keep the site moist while they establish, and wait to mow until plenty of new growth appears.
Maintain grass between the walkway pieces by mowing them regularly when you mow the rest of your lawn. You’ll need to get the mower out once every week or biweekly, depending on how quickly your lawn grows.
You may also use a string trimmer to maintain the grass between the stones. A string trimmer allows for more precision during the mowing process.
Pavers
Like flagstones, pavers are hard stone pieces perfect for making a path. They’re standardized and mass-produced, meaning they lack the irregular, organic shapes of natural stones. Though they don’t work well in natural plantings, they’re perfect for linear and geometric designs.
Line a straight path with square pavers, or angle them slightly to form a curved trail. No matter what you’d like to create, pavers are superb, cheap, and durable; they’re ideal for outdoor environments. Use them en masse throughout your space, or lay them in a specific site where formal structure would be beneficial.
You may also make pavers yourself! Store-bought concrete bags are perfect for laying pavers. Though the process requires some labor and research, making pavers yourself is a budget-friendly alternative to buying dozens of them and having to transport them home.
Mowed Grass
If you love your lawn, you can transform part of it into a meadow-like landscape with mowed pathways. Simply mow where you’d like a path, and don’t mow where you don’t want to walk.
The effect is breathtaking; seed heads dance in the wind during summer, and you’ll be able to walk throughout the area as if you’re in a prairie!
When autumn arrives, complete a last mow of the paths and let the other spaces overwinter as they are. Seeds and rhizomes will sprout the next year in spring, recreating a similar prairie-style landscape for the new year.
Concrete
Concrete lasts a long time, often over ten years! It’s perfect for creating square, oval, or circular-shaped pieces to walk on. Find premade concrete pieces at stone retailers or home improvement stores. You may also make the large pieces yourself if you’re familiar with concrete.
Because proper mixing and setting of concrete is important for its longevity, you’ll want to ensure you do it right the first time. Hire a professional hardscaping company if you’re unsure and can afford to. Otherwise, test laying the concrete in a small area before doing so throughout the yard. Enlist the help of a handy friend if you know someone!
Gravel
Gravel comes in many shapes and sizes. It’s long-lasting and budget-friendly! Find it widely available in landscaping and home improvement stores.
Gravel is ideal for areas with soggy soil or standing water. It can help raise the soil surface to aid with drainage, allowing for paths to wind through soggy sites without issues. Over time, the pebbles will sink into the ground, and you’ll need to reapply more to maintain proper drainage.
Pea gravel contains even-sized pebbles; it’s one of the best sizes for garden projects. Place thick layers of the stuff wherever you’d like weed and plant-free pathways.
Metal Edging
Because gravel is tiny compared to large rocks and stones, some edging materials will help keep them in place. Metal, plastic, rubber, and wooden edging types are available. Metal is long-lasting, durable, and a more permanent solution than plastic, wood, or rubber.
Place edging by digging it into the ground, burying a portion beneath the soil. This will lock the metal in place so that it holds whatever you put inside. After burying the landscape edging, fill the interior with pea gravel, woodchips, or pebbles.
Brick
Instead of gravel or chips, you can create an intricate pattern with red bricks inside the edging! Red bricks are easy to lay out, though they aren’t cheap. They’re made of clay and last for many years without breaking down.
Create criss-cross, diagonal, or checkered designs. There are infinite ways of laying bricks! A helpful trick is to create a straight line along the edging with bricks, then make the pattern inside the lines.
You may also pair bricks with pavers, flagstones, or concrete slabs to create multi-color designs. Use a material like paver sand or mortar in between the bricks and rocks to hold them together after you lay them down.
Mosaic Walkway
Like bricks, mosaic designs aren’t cheap! Though they’re expensive and complicated to create, they’re long-lasting and they add artistic value to your garden space. Mosaics involve laying painted rocks, ceramic pieces, or other durable materials with concrete to hold them together.
Professional mosaic makers are famous for their intricate and detailed designs. Make one yourself with your own unique style, or find a local mosaic maker to hire for the job.
