Garden pathways can be an attractive and practical addition to your property

There's nothing more annoying during the wetter months of the gardening year (year-round for some of us!) than walking across soggy grass or a muddy path to get from one part of the garden to another. Not only do your feet get wet and dirty, but you can also end up tracking half the garden inside your home (or so say grumbling spouses).

One solution is to create a garden path or walkway. These can connect one part of the garden to another, lead to a particular spot on your property, or even be as simple as taking you from the driveway to the back door. A well-constructed path is not only useful, but it can also be an attractive part of your property's hardscaping, adding value and interest to the grounds around your home.

Pathways can play an important role in your garden's structure, or its "bones," as landscape designers often call it. A well-planned and constructed pathway lends a sense of definition to the garden, especially when it leads to an interesting destination.

You may opt to hire a professional to design and build your pathway for you, but it's worth considering doing the work yourself. It isn't all that difficult, and as with most garden projects, you'll save yourself a lot of time, energy and muttering if you do some planning before you start. Ask yourself where a path would be most frequently travelled. What areas of your yard and garden do you want to access? Are you planning to make a nice walkway from the driveway to your front entryway? Would you prefer a meandering path through your backyard perennial plantings? Do you want a straight, formal walk or a curving, more casual path that lures the stroller into different areas of your garden? Would some well-placed stepping-stones suffice or do you want an actual gravelled or paved walkway? What do you plan to use for materials: Stone, concrete or brick pavers, wood, pea gravel?

No matter what you're going to use as a medium for building your path, you'll probably have to spend a little time levelling off the area where you're going to build, filling in sunken spots and raking the ground off to make it as level as possible. When you're laying materials such as pavers, brick, stone or gravel, you may want to put down a layer of black landscape cloth or heavy black plastic before you start with the actual pathway materials. Plastic or cloth will help to reduce the development of weeds in your walkway, meaning more time to spend doing the garden tasks you really enjoy.

An inexpensive and effective method for controlling weeds in pathways, between pavers or stones and along borders, is to use an organic weed solution. Mix together one cup of salt with one four-litre container of vinegar and one tablespoon of dish detergent. Spray or pour this directly onto weeds, making sure to apply a generous amount, but do be careful not to spray it near your cherished perennials or annual plantings, because this will kill desired plants as well as weeds.

Stepping-stones are a valuable, easy and inexpensive way to develop a path, especially when placed in a wide garden border. Walking on garden soil compacts it down, making it harder to plant or cultivate. By creating a path of stepping-stones, you'll be sure only to walk or work from the border pathway. Make sure, however, that your stones are wide enough to provide stable, comfortable footing to walk and stand on, or else you'll be no further ahead. (You could lose your balance and topple into the petunias. Yes, I'm speaking from experience here.)

You can purchase ready-made stepping stones of materials ranging from resin to concrete inlaid with mosaic tiles or stain glass, or create your own using quick-set concrete and ready-to-use stepping stone molds. Lee Valley carries several types of molds for casting your own stones, and I've made some that are working very nicely-and they're much less expensive than pre-fabricated stones.

Often gardeners are met with the challenge of keeping a pathway looking attractive along its edges as well as underfoot. An effective way to add beauty to your walkway is to edge it with plants. A low hedge of dwarf evergreens (whether conifers such as juniper or broadleaf such as boxwood), dwarf hostas, or a hardy, fragrant herb such as lavender or Artemisia will make a wonderful complement to any planned pathway. If you're building a new path and want to add edging plants, remember to space your shrubs or perennials appropriately. The edging may look a little sparse for the first several years but will fill in over time.

You may also want to incorporate low-growing, creeping plants into your walkway. One of these years I'm going to actually get around to building a nice walkway with fragrant creeping thyme filling in the crevasses between the stones of the path. I've seen many such paths in other gardens and I covet them seriously. Any of the hardy thymes, including the lovely silvery woolly thyme, can be used, as can chamomile, a very traffic-durable plant. You can use other creeping plants such as creeping phlox, some of the smaller sedums, periwinkle or saxifrage in between the stones of your wall and along the edges. These plants aren't fragrant, but there's something about the juxtaposition of stone and living plant material that is totally irresistible.

Path Materials

Sod, seed or stone? Pavers, gravel or wood? Do you want a living walkway of plant material, or something more permanent and hardy? Here's a quick primer on some of your options:

Grass: A well-kept pathway of grass can look very attractive but will require mowing, trimming, watering, fertilizing and possibly weeding to keep it looking its best.

Loose material: Bark chips, heavy sawdust, crushed rock or pea gravel are all effective ways of creating a path, but you will need to apply a deep enough layer (generally 4-6 inches) to create a good base for walking. You may also need to top up the gravel or mulch every year, or rake it occasionally to keep the pathway looking its best. Bear in mind that pea gravel, composed of rounded stones, can be slippery to walk on and is best used as a decorative border around stepping stones or concrete pavers.

Wood: You can build a raised walkway using treated timber or cedar, slice "stepping stones" out of logs, or even frame your walkway with timber. Wood is lovely and imparts a warm look to a walkway, but can be very high-maintenance over a period of years.

Stone: A popular medium for walkways, but not the easiest material to work with. You'll need special tools and safety equipment to cut slabs of rock such as slate or limestone and you'll want to make sure the ground is very level on the base under the stone

Interlocking pavers: These have become extremely popular in recent years, and there are many different types available. You will need to prepare the walkway properly before laying pavers. This will include levelling, adding sand and tamping it down very well to provide a solid base for the pavers to rest on.

Brick: You can make a walkway using brick instead of pavers, but in many cases you'll be better off to mortar the brick into place rather than leave it unsecured.