It has been a few years modifying my yard from plain grass to something more interesting. I think I am done with trees and shrubs and I am now looking for ideas of semi-formal paths.

I wonder if you could maybe share some pictures of yours so I can get a better idea??

I appreciate any tips/ideas you can share

1. Avoid straight pathways.
2. Decide in advance if you are going to walk single file or side by side with someone.
3. Whatever material you use, plan for drainage and debris cleanup.

Silvia has lovely paths in her back garden, but for me they were difficult to walk on. This is a photo she posted in another subject.

Our 'most' formal path is still in progress, it winds from our driveway to the front door. We turned an area we traversed constantly into a formal path.

We are using dwarf mondo grass to line the edge of the path. The path itself is brown mulch from Bolling Green. It compacts nicely to provide a nice firm and secure footing, and it looks different than the other mulch we have in the gardens. There is an ADA playground mulch that compacts very nicely that that I would really like to try, and it can be blown.

I'm also interested in trying out 'crushed asphalt'. There was a patio of crushed asphalt in one of the demo areas at Epcot during the Flower & Garden festival that was quite nice, and permeable. I've got a picture somewhere if you want me to find it.

The rock place in Sanford has granite fines. I'm going to bring home enough of those to test a short 4' or so path.

Here are a few more of our 'au naturale' paths.

Here, it is the grass that gets mowed on Mondays (picture today) is a grass path in my veggie garden area:

This is what happens when the gardens and the paths are all the same type of mulch, hard to tell the path from the garden. Of course, sweet potato goes pretty much wherever it wants.

I saw a picture somewhere, maybe here? A path laid out with poured concrete edging. That was lovely. I'd love to do those in our back.

'Flowerlady' down south uses roll roofing for paths. That sounds like a really good idea that I'm going to test out along our back fence. waves hello to Flowerlady

Allrighty then, time for some more paths to chime into this thread!

~dianne

I went to Barnes&Noble yesterday and bought the June/July issue of Organic Gardening and when I was in page 45 I saw my paths,lol. I showed them to Willy and he said they are our pictures and I said no because they are done by a designer, they are in California and have fruit trees in the raised beds not like vegetables in ours. If you don't have the magazine, go to the bookstore or library to see it and you will know what I am talking about.

From personal experience since I had a lot of paths in my life, all I can say is that it has to fit your needs and of course your budget. I like clean, orderly looks and if I can I prefer stones of any kind, big, small anything that I don't have to replace every season or whenever they decompose. I had crushed granite in Arizona and I love the look with desert plants. If you are going for mulch ideas recently I saw a perfect mulch that is called playground, last longer also costs more money.

If you want any info on our paths, I will be glad to help and describe how we did it, where we bought it and about how long it takes. Just send me an email...

Silvia