Paving and crazing
Natural stone in wide joints is mixed with river gravel for an attractive and unusual finish.
Sleek slabs with flush joints look sophisticated but also allow water to permeate through to the ground below.
Paving stones can play in every garden, and whatever your budget or taste, a few metres of slabbed paving will add charm and practicality. Choices include natural flagstones, slabs, setts and slate pavers (from €36 M²), brick paving (from €30 per M²), and concrete (from €15 per M²).
Indian and Chinese sandstone with a practical, rough texture are the best deal in real stone from garden centres, but look at what indigenous suppliers of stunning limestone and granite have to offer.
Concrete is durable, cheap and can be stamped, tinted and cast in multitudes of ways. It may not be colourfast forever, but it offers a uniformity of colour, size and depth, ideal for the amateur gardener with a fistful of euro and some willing muscle.
Whether you fancy real stone or are content with a coloured aggregate, complement existing stone-work on or around your home and make a nod to the quarried stone particular to your area. Even one dominant tone from, say, the lichen blooming on your sandstone walls, or a thread of quartz in your limestone, can be incorporated in your new, hard landscaping in silvers and golden buffs. The right colour sits with the local stone and soil type without strain.
Paving materials will look different when wet, so slop water over darker materials to see their finish under rain. Some colour variation is expected in natural materials, so surrender the idea of carpet-style immaculate order.
Once you have your colour group, research the frost-resistance, maintenance and grip of the pavers. Honed stones, such as limestone and granite, should be bush-hammered or sandblasted to give them a non-slip surface. Cream-riven stones will show algae and moss where a darker stone will disguise them. If you blast your concrete pavers with a high-pressure wash, the concrete ‘fines’ making it up will start to show in a pebbly porridge.
The standard size for a flagstone or paver is 450mm square, but many other sizes are available in interlocking designs of small and larger stones. Mixing up sizes creates a charming, relaxed finish.
Slabs are an ideal project if you want to build your own paths and patios, as they are lifted in single units. They are heavy to lift when being lowered into position. The more consistent the thickness of the slabs, the easier they will be to lay. ‘Dry lay’ your design in a path or patio first to ensure it works and all the lifting is best done by two.
A patio must be at least 150mm below your house’s DPC (damp proof course) and should slope away from walls or fence by 25mm over 1.5m. Flush joints in heavy flags, and random and extensive mortar beds, are best left to professionals.
Mortared joins or machine-cut slabs butted up to each other give a clean, crisp finish and in a pale colour can suggest space. Alternate soft joints can discreetly deal with drainage issues around paving and patios. If you don’t like the look of plain, porous joints in sharp sand, plant them up to give glorious green frames in walk-on-me thyme. If you are not going to mortar your slabs, an even ground preparation will ensure the compression under each slab as you walk on it. A 5cm lift on the edge of one slab could pitch you rudely into the border in flip-flops. A riven slab must be laid the right side up and their deliberately uneven surface can make chair legs wobble.
Paving can be reshuffled, and even when you don’t have the original paving material on hand, you can lift them and reconfigure as the garden develops. The joy of having pavers laid in loose, and cement-pointing rather than hard-grouted into position, is that you can lift them and reconfigure as the garden develops.
To inflate or augment areas of paving, move them apart, bringing existing slabs to the edges of a patio to extend it or use them to lengthen a path.
Then, in-fill the cleared area with a contrasting material, in pavers, wood, chips or soft materials, from planting to woodchips.
DIY paving kits are ideal for up-scaling a paved area over the weekend. For example, a circle kit in Wetherdale pavers, from B&Q, can be fashioned into a generous, 2.4m circle or squared off to 2.4m. From €425 in weathered autumn, with alternative kits starting at €268.
You can also mix up conventional paving with other materials, from hardwoods to edging, gravels, cobbles and sets, but just be careful that any pedestrian area doesn’t present dangerous shifts in height or going. Smaller-unit sizes will slip into positions where full-size pavers will strain to fit.
If you’re not handy with a bolster and club hammer, experiment with dry-laying designs to lock into path edges, gateways and meet borders neatly using more diminutive units, such as reclaimed bricks.
* Extensive hard landscaping does come at a price, and it’s not just your expense for the slabs.
* Too much paving can lead to water run-off problems and potentially, flooding, as has occurred in the UK, where paved front gardens remains the rage in many urban areas with scarce off-street parking.
* With soft joints to pavers, gravel and lawns there is a natural leaching of water down into the water table. Non-permeable paving sloughing water off to drains can also cause the ground below, especially clay soils, to shrink and subside. Combine your paving choices with an avenue for water to travel back to the ground below over a wide area.
* Choose local materials wherever possible to cut down on those carbon heavy road miles for products from overseas.
* Work conditions in overseas quarries do not always adhere to what’s morally acceptable in the West with long hours, no labour unions and child workers. Where you do buy Indian or Chinese goods look for the Ethical Trading Initiative logo and use them in modest areas, sinking these stones as stepping stones rather than as vast patio features.
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