Garden path help

[Laurasanford111]

Hello.
We have moved into a new house in October, very long garden we have now, the first section of garden is grass and going to be stepping stones, it then has a divide because of the trees, rest of the garden is grass with grey concrete slabs running up to end of garden, we have built raised beds on the left going to have gravel around those. My question is what type of path is easiest and cheapest to do? My DH is handy so I'm sure he will manage but I have no idea where to start, I'm going for cottage garden kind of look with what I'm planting so yeah, any advice is appreciated x

Easiest and cheapest is one where you don’t need a base layer, so gravel or bark
chippings

well how about a mown path through a meadow area? Also no reason why you can’t keep going with stepping stones as that is cheaper than a continuous path. If you can recycle any bricks you can make steps from arranging the bricks into intersecting L shapes with gravel in the middle. Or do crazy paving ones if you have spare pavers. There are camomiles and low growing thymes you can plant in them if these are not heavy traffic paths. If you have a gravel or bark path personally I would want some sort of weed matting underneath as the weeds do come (I don’t necessarily buy it as you can use a mish mash of things as long as water can find a way through). I would also want a path edging to stop gravel/ bark dissipating. I think not having too many different “hard landscaping” materials works well and keeps things harmonious. Pinterest has some lovely ideas. Your garden sounds lovely and don’t feel everything has to be done at once - the process is great fun and less expensive to do over time. Good luck!

Gravel paths through grass can be a bit of a pest as the stones get in the grass and damage your lawnmower blades. Bark chips might be better really, and you can just top it up with fresh every now and then. You could edge the path with old bricks set flush with the grass so it is easier to mow.

Go for gentle naturalistic curves, and put the path where you would naturally want to walk from A to B. They are called 'desire paths' or 'desire lines'.

I bougjt some round stepping stones from a seller on ebay. £54 for 13 i think.

Put one in position on top of the lawn. Had a spade with a slight circular edge and just insert it into the turf using the edge of the paving stone to 'trace' around the stone by digging down, moving 90 degrees around the stone and digging down a few inches and so on.

Then remove the stone and lift up the turf disc. Add course sand which helps it to set properly. Then place stone on sand. If its not level you can take it out and add more sand or remove sand to get it level with turf. Then stand on it to compress it. Thats it. No cement or anyrthing else.

A brick path would be reasonably easy to do (dry sand and cement base and then brush sand/ sand and cement into the gaps) and look lovely in a cottage garden. You can do sweeping curves reasonably easily with bricks too so could do something quite dramatic of you wanted. If there are nearby skips you could use reclaimed bricks which would make it really cheap.