Garden Path - The Final Frontier

It's well past time for the (apparently semi-)yearly Garden Path update. I have promised to keep it real, so here's the lowdown.

It's been two three years. Regular readers may recall that two years ago (the year after we made it in the first place) we re-did the path due to some bad weathering. The last two springs our whole back yard flooded. 

Before the flood last year, the path was in okay shape. I took a peek between the snow melt and the deluge. But once the water receded this is what I found:

The disks had floated up, some clear out of the garden. Sad day.

Honestly, I couldn't make up my mind for awhile on whether on not I wanted to fix it. The disks were in good shape, so it just would have been a matter of resetting them. But would I be doing this every year?

After making our path the first time, I discovered that the original pin I'd seen was from a home and garden show where it was never exposed to the elements. So after contemplating all my issues with it, including knowing it is incredibly popular and people seem to want it to work, I finally came to the conclusion that it's just not worth it to keep it.

Well into the fall, when I finally decided, Matt and I began to rip out all the disks and Matt started to replace the path with bricks.

We still had bricks leftover from the patio project, and I thought it would nicely tie things together.

However, instead of laying them smooth side up, I chose to have the holes exposed. It adds interest, drainage and traction.

After setting them in, Matt back filled with the dirt. This not only helps pack them in place, but fills the holes making it look nicer.

But that's about as far as we got last fall before hard frost set in and we had to give it up until spring.

Good news/Bad news. It flooded again. But that let us see how even incomplete the path stayed in place. So, forward ho! 

Now it's done. And I actually kind of like better than the wood. (Even though the wood was super cool, I know!)

I have had to weed it a bit, but a ground cover growing in the holes and cracks is always an option.

So...forgive me for abandoning the wood path?
You've gotta admit, the brick is still a bit quirky and interesting laid this way. :)