How do you make a slate or flagstone walkway for the garden or backyard?
How do you make a slate or flagstone walkway for the garden or backyard?
Have you checked whether there are Hubs about this? I wouldn't be surprised. . .
There are various levels of complication to doing this. If you go with 'textbook,' you plan your walk, mark it with stakes, dig it out, fill with probably 4-6" of gravel for drainage, and lay your flags--dry for simplicity, or with mortar for a solid, durable walkway.
At the other end of the spectrum, you can just lay out the stone where you think you want it and sprinkle loose soil around the edges to encourage the existing grass to build up the sod around the stones.
Obviously, the first way gives you a highly professional result, if done right; the second way is no-fuss, no-muss, but the result isn't comparable, looking (at best) rather "rustic."
I'm thinking that if you're buying slate you are imagining something much closer to the first result than the second. In that case, you should definitely do more research about what's involved in terms of time, skill, and money.Easy way.......I used old slate 12 x 12 tiles from inside and made a path in my garden.
I get more compliments on that and it was free! Use your imagination.....and don't spend if you don't have to. it does not have to look perfect.....that's the point.I actually had one when I lived in North Georgia. My daughter and I made it. We made steps as well out of slate.
We dug out the soil for the pathway about 3 or 4 inches deep so the pieces of slate would have a bed but not be recessed so far as to sink into the ground You will need to consider how thick your pieces are and let that guide you. We laid about 10 pieces of slate so it could run around the side of our house to the gate at our fence.
To make steps, we dug out the soil from the hill about half the length of the slate. We did that in order to have a place we could slip the slate inside like it was in a little pocket. It was a very sturdy stairway...we used it daily. We had four steps on our stairway.The pieces of slate were large...about 18 inches long so we had a lot of surface area to work with. It actually was not very time consuming either.
