path materials

peppercat · path materials

We're making over our back garden - away from scrappy lawn and into productive raised beds. We're putting local gravel between the beds but had planned to use second hand paving slabs to make path from house to shed and greenhouse but they seem to be like gold dust - I've tried ebay, freecycle, craigslist, gumtree all to no avail and even asked the local council roads dept (none at present). does anyone else know a good source - particularly of 2'x2' as the 2'x3' are a but heavy for us to manouvre.

Or an ecocologically sound alternative or are we just going to have to extend the gravel?

Townie

I know what you mean about 2nd hand paving slabs being like gold dust.. we were the same down here... I needed some to lay as a base for a summerhouse we got for free... ended up having to buy new slabs from a local builders merchants.

How about reclaimed/2nd hand house bricks for a path alternative, i'm thinking of doing this to my garden, I need a path up to the summerhouse, would need loads tho as I want to lay them on their sides to give a flat walking surface.

kimmie

Peppercat, i dont know if they are any good, but i have lots of cobbles you are welcome to! you will have to come and collect them though:wink:

JamesB

we used groundguard (a plastic hex mesh made from recycled plastic) which can be bought from the likes of screwfix and the grass just grows through it and works quite well.

We've tried using slate offcuts but the weeds grow through them and they need to be broken up a lot.

James

Sassinak

Slates are astonishingly difficult to break on purpose. They break so easily accidentally that I thought it would be simple.
I had all the broken slates that had been stripped from the roof. I decided to use them as mulch on a shrub bed. Decided the easiest way to break them was half a dozen slates and a couple of large rocks into the concrete mixer, switch on and give it a good tumbling.
I forgot about it - I have the attention span of a butterfly and get distracted very easily. Came back an hour later expecting to find a mixer full of crumbs - they were still intact apart from a few scratches on the surface. Broke some by hand with a hammer, I can see why they used it as labour in prisons lol
So I now have paths of part broken slates between the veg beds which are not very good at all

JamesB

I couldn't agree more sass Im glad its just not me! I go along the path every now and again with a sledgehammer but it takes a while

James

IainC

Might be worth asking the builders merchants if they have any damaged ones you can get cheap/free?

I know that we were in one place in Elgin getting slabs and there were a couple there that were damaged enough that no-one would have paid full price for them... dunno what they do with them, whether they dump them, return them or flog them off cheap... wouldn't hurt to ask.

Clydesdaleclopper

my neighbour got 3 pallets of new ones for £6 from Thainstone.

peppercat

Thanks for everyone's ideas.

I'm not sure about the long term green-ness of the grow through mesh type things as you'd still need to keep mowing regularly and either electric or petrol is going to be using energy (getting too old to contemplate push mower). I know it is good for water soaking away but I am planning to have a bog-garden/damp bed at the lowest point anyway so actually permeability is not something I want for this particular project.

Slates (and cobbles) sound like a lot of work so I'm happy to relate that I've found a local aggregate merchant who has some second hand slabs for sale at not too unreasonable price (and delivers) so back to plan A. I particularly didn't want new ones as that is perpetuating the cement/concrete industry which is one of the most polluting and energy gobbling in the country - all the more reason to "rescue" used ones to prevent all the energy etc being wasted in landfill.

erica