How to Install a Gravel Garden Path

Your garden plantings are blooming, and everything looks beautiful. Except when you look down at your feet. You’ve worn paths around your garden that get muddy every time you water or it rains. That’s getting tracked into the house.

In a weekend or two, you can create a gravel path that won’t allow weeds to grow through it, look fantastic and add to the beauty of your garden.

You will need:

• Shovel and spades
• Wheelbarrow
• Heavy duty gloves
• Stainelss or galvanized steel, plastic or other edging
• Landscape stakes, landscape paint, marking string
• Measuring tape
• Pencil and paper
• Stone pack
• Gravel, crushed shell or other garden path filler
• Wood blocks
• Hammer
• Landscape fabric
• Garden rake
• Landscape fabric pins

Step One:

Draw your garden on a piece of paper. Design your path, either according to the paths worn in the yard or different paths. Three to four feet across is typical of garden paths; you can design yours to be wider or narrower.

Curves, straight lines, circles, or geometric shapes can be part of your design. There are no rules that say you can’t have one or all.

Before you dig, call your local utility company to locate phone, sewer, water and gas lines. Safe is always better.

Step Two:

Know what kind of soil you have. Gravel compacts down, so if you have soft loam, sand or other soft soil, you will need to create a bed for your gravel path.

For hard clay soil, no base is necessary, but I would still put one down. Clay is hard in between rains, but during rainy season, it becomes malleable.

Step Three:

Do this by digging six to seven inches down instead of three to four. Add stone pack, which is ¾” gravel and crushed stone dust. Rake the pack to make an even coating, and lightly mist with water until damp. With a soil compactor or hand tamper, (your local DIY store can tell you which is best for your soil), create a packed base three to four inches thick. Your gravel garden path won’t sink beneath the soil.

Step Four:

Using the stakes, string and/or paint, mark your garden path in the yard. Don’t dig for a couple of days. Walk along the pathway – see if the design fits you and your garden. You can add, subtract or change the design completely. When you reach the perfect design for you and your garden, you can begin digging.

Step Five:

Now for the hard part. Dig between your markers to the depth your project needs. Move the sod to your compost pile and place it roots side up. If you have patches in your yard that need grass- you have free sod. Don’t discard the removed dirt; use it to fill places in the yard.

The path walls should be as straight as possible.

Step Six:

Lay down three or four inches of stone pack and compact it into the soil. Repeat this until you have a base three inches thick for hard soil, four inches thick for soft soil. This is the hardest part of the project. A rented compactor makes short work of the project, relatively speaking.

Step Seven:

Ah, now the easy part. Line the path with landscape fabric with the shiny side up. Around curves, cut straight lines from the edge to the path line so the fabric bends. This is done in sewing fabrics as well. On the inside curves, try not to have too many bunches or folds. These are unpreventable when making a flat fabric fit a curved space.

You can certainly have the fabric laid out so the edges come up the walls of the trench and on the other side of the edging.

Use landscape fabric pins to hold the fabric in place.

Step Eight:

Unpack your edging material. Wood, plastic, galvanized steel, stone, brick or other materials all work well in garden paths. Lay the edging along the garden path. Begin installing your edging according to your plan. If using manufactured edging, follow the manufacturer’s directions.

Use your wood blocks to help drive steel stakes for steel and plastic edging. One mishit with the hammer and you’ll need to replace a section.

Step Nine:

Tap down your edging to make sure it’s level in the places you need it to be. There are no rules that says one part of the wall can’t be taller than another. If you have a sloping yard, using a stone or brick edging allows your path to look completely natural.

Step Ten:

Almost there. Now get your gravel, shells, mulch, lava rocks or other path filler and begin filling your garden path. Only fill to within a half inch of the edging’s top. This keeps the material from spilling over.

Smooth even with the rake. Fill with more gravel as needed. Colored stones make a garden path stand out as a feature in it’s own right. Some gardens have a focal point made from a medallion of colored gravels.

If weeds pop up, just pull them out. There’s nothing holding their roots.

Plant grass, flowers, small shrubs around the edging or leave plain.

Enjoy your new garden path- you’ve saved yourself thousands of dollars by doing the job yourself.

Source: Alexandra Bandon, “How to Lay a Gravel Path,” This Old House Website, no date given