Sometimes, more appealing creation of a potager garden is other than vegetables and herbs you plant. Just imagine hopping, skipping, and jumping right through your garden sans tripping over some runaway tomato vine or tussling with some especially prickly rosebush. Thus, pathways can save your behind, so to say-your yellow brick road to the far more orderly yet charming garden. A good design is your starting line. The blueprint to the path doesn’t need to be the stuff an architect’s dream’s made of, but it does need to be a smidgen foresighted. Begin with where you will want direct access-easy does it, so your kale won’t get trampled getting there. Wide paths of at least three feet work wonders, allowing wheelbarrows or a casual stroll with a friend. In places in the garden which are not so important, this may be under two feet.
But they won’t hurt your head much when making these material decisions. Gravel has a reassuring crunch underfoot and a rustic sensibility, plus it drains rainwater rather well. On its part, pavers are the unyielding fighters of weeds, providing a clean, geometric look.
Then there is the meek, submissive route of mulch or wood chips-the sound of your feet upon it almost seems a mini-vacation in itself. Those into reusing tend toward the character and a dash of nostalgia that comes with second-hand brick.
Mixing and matching-texture mashups, if you will-can marry function and funk. Thus, imagine a main axis of gravel and smaller trails lined with wood chips; that’s a fancy term for a system that would work and, while working, would add such interest to your paths that they would start morphing from just being mere modes of transportation to something alive, breathing into the story of your garden.
Edging is the knight in shining armor for your paths. It keeps the flora at bay with the piercing stare of a school librarian. Edging can be made of stones, wood logs, or metal strips. It’s that touch which keeps the elements in their place and that refuses the incursion of that one particularly brazen mint plant.
Solar lights down the paths for the night owls give romance to this garden, or at least flirting with the idea of moon-lit harvests. Besides, it will keep any nocturnal strolls and tumbles at bay. You could put on lighting well into the evening for aesthetics alone in an attempt to impress such features as a statue or bed of lavender.
Not as glamorous, admittedly; it’s like talking about onions, not roses. Drainage is important unless one fancies a slip-n-slide garden in the rainy season. Well-drained, it would have fewer puddles, dry soles, and happy souls. Very gentle slopes or subtly crowning the path to guide water away generally safeguards its usefulness and longevity.
Maintenance is your best friend here. Pathways are like houseguests in that they require just a little TLC-sweep them, renew the gravel, and retrieve wayward plants that are making a breech attempt. For a friendly and orderly garden, it’s a pretty small price to pay.
But why be practical? The paths are also an opportunity for fancy and delight: a hidden seat veiled by some tortuous path, a secluded bench on which to sit and muse.
Robust pathways in a potager garden: questions of choosing materials rightly.
The rolling out of the carpet in the garden deals with teeming plants and chirping birds, laying a useful path to boast of and tend the potager garden. But wait, before going to the nearest nursery, let us go on the very interesting journey to figure out what kind of material might turn out to be the next best friend of your garden.
A walk through your potager should be a little magical. The right path material adds not only functionality but an aesthetic feather to the garden. Gravel is the perennial favorite-the jeans of pathways, casual, adaptable, and oh-so-easygoing! It is relatively inexpensive, and that crunching sound underfoot is like music to a gardener’s ears. But don’t be too surprised when a number of little rebellious pieces venture elsewhere from the appointed path.
Brick is just so.quaintly old-world. Take a walk down a brick path, and you half expect to disappear through some secret door in the wall into the story-spinning frogs and waltzing bees of a hidden garden. Tradition then combines with visual interest in this tough product. Laying can be done in a fashion similar to working on a jigsaw puzzle and may take a steady hand, plus a little patience.
Then there’s always the bark mulch for the earthy-minded. Organic-looking, this is as if a welcome mat had been laid out by Mother Nature‘s very hand. Inexpensive, yes-and soft on the bare foot, too-but a seasonal shedder which tends to decompose and let weeds pop out, having a rather short life span. It is favored for this very fluidity hailing change as a virtue.
Of course, there is the stone: ah, the stalwart. Just think of those rough pathways meandering through ancient castles or whispering walkways in woodland getaways. Natural stone is lumpy-bumpy, resilient, and texturally speaking, of course, it is a treat to the eye; yet it carries, where great good looks are concerned, a penchant to test one’s wallet-so, after all, this is lasting elegance at a pretty prince-like price. Then, of course, there’s the classy concrete-but not your run-of-the-mill, ordinary concrete; imagine beautifully attractive, decorative stamped concrete. It’s the chameleon of your outdoor space, darting between jarringly contrasting patterns that, on occasion, can after some time take on the appearance of cobblestone, slate, or even wood! Boasting near-endless design capabilities, it resists the weathering process and feels particularly smooth to the bare foot. Just remember, an impressive entrance doesn’t always come cheap. The friendly guys within this concrete jungle are represented by the wooden boards. The wood does not only add that rustic touch but tends to relate organically with the environment. Use some resistant type, such as cedar or redwood, and treat it good so that it may live to see many seasons. One word of caution: it gets slippery with water-just like the playful spirit in your garden. Missing the crunching noise of footsteps on a leafy forest floor? Well, recycled rubber mulch is bound to perform just that without bringing along its decomposing side hustle. Brightly colored with an eco-friendly edge, this choice is fit for a garden that takes a quirky slant toward fun functionality over tradition.
