Garden designs that excite and stand out are hard to come by as it sometimes takes a lot of conscious effort to pull it off. This is not saying you cannot create a magnificent design without putting in a lot of effort, but if you want any design you do in your home to pop and draw attention, you have to do something away from the ordinary. The walkway is often neglected when designing as homeowners, and landscape designers focus on other parts of the home like front yard design, backyard design, among others.
Walkways see a lot of traffic, and as such, it is one of the best places to showcase your creativity. Walkway designs are quickly gaining momentum, with more people looking to design their walkways better.
There are several places you can find walkways; these include in your front yard, from the street or gate to your front door; in your backyard, from your back door to your backyard garden, swimming area, pavilion, and more. Wherever you have a walkway, putting up something more than the traditional monotonic and bland-looking designs is a joy to behold.
Are you interested in finding beautiful designs for your walkways? This article brings to light fascinating design ideas to use. They include using materials like wood, grass, stone, gravel, and more.
Fascinating Walkway Ideas
If you’re finding it challenging to come up with a befitting design for your walkway, you’ll find this section pretty captivating as we go through some ideas. These designs can be quick DIY or sophisticated, requiring the help of professionals.
#1. An Archway of Creeping Plants
How about using climbing plants to set up a beautiful walkway in your garden? You can extend your garden right to your walkway while providing an excellent view as beautiful plants and flowers grace the sides and top of the area.
Set wood or any trellis by the side and over the walkway, then grow a climbing plant along the border so they can grow onto and over the trellis. You can grow roses or any of your favorite creeping plants. Remember that you’ll have to maintain the plant by pruning regularly and sweeping fallen leaves from the area.
#2. Pond Pathway
Having a backyard pond is exciting, but do you know what’s even more exciting? Being able to interact closely with the fishes, plants, and the water itself is exciting. One of the best ways to improve your interaction and make it worthwhile is by adding a pathway across the pond. Not only does this provide an avenue to see your pond better, but it also creates a path to quickly cross to the other side.
You can use the traditional bridge over the pond or go with tree stumps in the water to serve as stepping areas like in this idea. If you go with the latter, keep the stumps clean at all times. Dirt and moist can make it unsafe to walk over.
#3. Polished Brick Design
If you want something more than a conventional brick pathway design, why not try out this polished brick pathway with different laying patterns? The bricks are shiny with the traditional red look with some black hues.
This design uses the basket weave pattern for the center and a straightforward brick-on-top design at the borders. The bricks with black hues are placed strategically across the walkway to make them more dynamic and less monotonic. This type of pathway design is excellent when green plants surround it like in the picture.
#4. Casual Gravel Delight
Gravel may be unassuming, but their designs create magic. It is simple, affordable, and easy to maintain, and that is why it is a favorite design option for many people. You can use gravel to cover your walkway. It fits a lot of home designs like ranch styles, cottages, and more. You also can use gravel of other colors even though grey makes the green plants around it stand out.
If you have a rock garden, creating this gravel walkway would be fantastic as they complement each other well. This gravel idea is also an excellent DIY option. To set this up, clear the area and level it (the design does not suit sloppy areas), mark the borders and fill the space with your desired gravel type and color.
#5. As Mulch as You Want
Mulch is the most important thing here, yes, mulch! The same one you discard, from wood chippings to cocoa bean pods, comes alive in this pathway design. Mulch which is soft and tender on foot and aesthetically pleasing, especially with the right border plants, is used in this design to create the pathway design you seek.
The design creates a simple yet appealing feeling. It is also a DIY option you can do without the help of professionals. To set this up, first market the walkway area and dig, take out a small portion of the topsoil, and fill the path with crushed stones; this will aid drainage. You can then cover the area with the mulch of your choice and line the borders with plants, rocks, or pavement.
#6. The Collectors Delight
If you or your kids are collectors, collecting pebbles, stones, shells, and the likes, you’ll probably have a massive pile of them by now in your home. What if I told you there’s a way to use up that collection while remembering them every day? This collector pathway design uses stones, pebbles, seashells, and the likes collected over time with cement to create befitting stepping stones for your pathway. It can be a pathway in your garden or backyard.
It is an excellent DIY option with family to improve family bonding and fun while also remaining productive. First, get cement molds of any shape of your voice, then spread your collectibles at the base of the molds making sure no one is on any other. Mix the cement and pour it into the molds and allow it to set. After it has dried, remove your stepping stones with your collectibles on top and arrange them across your pathway.
#7. The Wood and Gravel Combo
When you do a combination of wooden and gravel pathways, your area immediately wears a new look. This design is unique, different from a lot of other standard designs, all these while remaining pretty easy to replicate. It is a DIY option requiring very little expertise.
It would be best if you had flat wooden slabs cut to the width of your pathway. You also need any color of gravel of your choice and smooth pebbles, preferably larger sizes for the border. You can use other things to set your edge like plants, rocks, and the likes in place of smooth stones.
Mark and clear the area, place your cut wooden slabs across the pathway as seen in the picture above. Fill the surrounding areas with gravel and line the borders with pebbles or your preferred border material.
#8. Stone Slab Walkway
Stone slab walkways are popular traditional pathway designs that have been existing for a long way. You can diversify by the type of stones you use and their arrangement. You can use large, finely cut stones in different shapes or irregularly shaped rocks in their natural form. You can also tightly pack these stones or allow spaces in between that can be filled with pebbles, gravels, or mulch.
You can purchase already cut stones in different sizes, colors, and shapes. The design can be executed yourself if you want to make a mosaic stone pathway; it would be best if you seek the help of professionals.
To create a less sophisticated but still pleasing design, as seen in the picture above, get cut slabs from garden stores in the sizes, shapes, and colors you want. Clear the pathway area and place the stones strategically across the path leaving enough room between each slab. Fill the space between the slabs with mulch, pebbles, or gravel.
#9. The Paver Idea
Pavers are pre-built foot stones that you can easily get at your local home improvement store. It is so easy to set up yet is a beauty to behold in your pathway. You can choose from various concrete pavers of different sizes, hues, and shapes or go with the more sophisticated and expensive option in granite made from natural stone, granite, or quartzite like the one seen in the picture above.
You can place the pavers away from each other in spaces where a foot can step on when walking or decide to bring them to close up, touching each other. Pavers can stand on their own, so you do not need to fasten them with cement or something else.
If you decide to put the pavers apart, you can surround the area between the pavers with mulch, gravel or even place the pavers in your garden and let the grass grow around it. Ensure to keep it low enough so it does not come in contact with the mower blades.
#10. The Grassy Walk
There is no set-in-stone way to make a beautiful walkway, and this is evident here where grass makes the pathway. This idea is excellent when you have a lot of greens in the background and you want a tender area you can walk barefoot across while enjoying the scene. It should be used in areas with little foot traffic as too much traffic will kill the grass.
Plant a tender lawn grass or use sod to cover the walk area. Ensure to mow regularly to keep the grass tidy and appealing.
Summary
Your walkway deserves more than it is getting, and designing a begging pathway is the first step to showing the world your class—the ideas here range from straightforward DIY options to options best left for the professionals. Choose the one best suited to your needs or use these to stoke your creative juices and create something entirely different.
