Path
in a wheel-barrow

WHAT IT TAKES

Time: 2 hours

Skill level: Beginner

There’s no heavy lifting, no fancy tools and it’s really, really cheap!

This garden path is as easy to build as it is to look at and walk on. A bundle or two of cedar shakes, a roll of landscape fabric, a few bags of mulch and a couple of hours are all it takes to build it.

To create the path edging, we cut 18-in.-long cedar shakes in half, then pounded the 9-inch sections about halfway into the ground. Shakes are naturally rot-resistant and should last 5 to 10 years or more. And since they’re tapered, they’re easy to install. Bear in mind, shakes will split and break if you try to pound them into soil with lots of rocks, roots or heavy clay; this path works best in loose garden soil.

The landscape fabric helps prevent weeds from growing up into the path and creates a barrier so the dirt below remains separate from the path materials above. The path material itself can be wood chips, shredded bark, decorative stone—just about anything you can think of.

Here’s how to do it in three easy steps:

Tip:

Place a scrap 2x6 on top of each shake and pound on that if you find you’re breaking shakes as you drive them in. The 2x6 will help distribute the blow more evenly across the top of the shake.

1 Pound the cedar shakes into the soil using a small mallet. Stagger every other shake, overlapping the previous shake by about 1/2 in.

2 Trim or fold the fabric so it follows the contour of the cedar shake edging. On sloped ground, use U-shaped sod staples to hold the fabric.

3 Install a 2- to 3-in. layer of wood chips, shredded bark or stone over the landscape fabric.