Nature may be sleeping, but you are probably planning how to improve your garden next year. You have a dream about new paths. Just so they don’t get overgrown with weeds right away, they run through your head. “It is possible, and it is possible to change it again quickly,” says our garden expert in the consultation room. All you need are two magical ingredients – cardboard and wood chips.
Listen to the entire podcast consultation HERE:
You think of them every time you look out the window. Even when you fall asleep at night. What new paths will you create during this year’s gardening rest? Where they will line the beds and where they will wrap around the pergola.
You long for paths that fit right into the garden. You don’t want to dig anything, but be able to change the route as needed quickly and without much work. It’s not impossible at all. On the contrary, it is the easiest way to create a path and cancel it later at will. In addition, with purely natural materials and a minimum of costs.
Dumping is not enough
Order a flatbed of sand or gravel and then just pour and pour. It may seem easy and that is why many of us practice exactly this procedure in the garden. But nature always wins over time.
“Even if you spread a five-centimeter-thick layer of bark, it will only help temporarily,” Jana Bucharová, an expert on garden topics from Receptář magazine, says in our podcast. Weeds grown through gravel are also difficult to remove. And even if it goes better with sand, the result is the same – a ruined path.
Don’t let him go
You can of course set up fixed paths. That is, excavate the route or places for individual pedals up to fifty centimeters, fill them with sand and then place stones, pavement or other material on which you plan to walk inside.
“However, in my opinion, it is more practical to have the option to change paths, which is difficult with these permanent ones,” explains Jana Bucharová. It is therefore important to get rid of weeds, which otherwise turn the paths into an unpleasant glade within a few months.
Cover and sprinkle
You can create a simple path that will not be overgrown by weeds in two steps. “First, stop the weeds from growing,” says the expert. “Cover the selected place, you can use cardboard, but you can also use non-woven fabric, which, unlike flower beds, is quite suitable for paths.”
Then fill the path itself with soft material. “You can choose gravel again, but it will easily get into the surrounding flower beds or lawn, and you have to take into account that it will sink a little into the ground,” points out Jana Bucharová.
Therefore, he recommends wood chips as better, which will decompose over time, but will not get in the way anywhere and also allows for easy restoration. And when you decide to change your path again in a year or two? He will be gone once or twice and without kicking.
