A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Brick garden path

I have recently aquired a huge amount of old bricks. I have been thinking about putting a brick path through my yard & then ripping out most of the back lawn & planting small gardens along the sides of the path as it winds around the back yard. My question is this...Has anyone here ever laid a brick path? I have used brick for edging many times, but I have never actually laid a walkway with it. Is it necessary to lay the bricks in cement or could I just dig a path & put down a layer of sand & then lay down the bricks? I don't want to go to the trouble of digging up the turf & laying down the bricks if I am going to have to pull them all back up & use cement. Thanks for any help you can give me:)

I have not personally ever put in a brick walkway (but man oh man would I love to! where did you get those old bricks?), but my parents neighbor did it a long time ago, and he did not use cement. It hasn't been a problem for him.

Thanks for the info:) I got really lucky on the bricks. The old two story court house directly across the street from me is being torn down...it was a red & yellow brick building from the early 1900s, anyhoo...the construction crew said I can have all the bricks I want. I have hundreds of them:)

Hi Chrissy,

Info you might be interested in:

Brick Patios or Walks in 7 Easy Steps

Thanks so much for the great link!! I am going to use that site to help me do the work:)

we're in the process. You do just like you said. We used a pattern from Monticello. Just scrape an area, put down sand to level it, then lay your brick in your pattern. We might brush a little cement over the top and hose it off. I'm also putting some stepping stone paths through my garden.

lowes.com might have a how to...or maybe diynet.com With our brick pathways, they just laid sand, leveled it, and then put down the bricks. Then they brushed sand over the top of the path to fill in the cracks a little. You might want to put down some landscaper's fabric before you put the sand down so that weeds don't grow between the bricks (we get little saplings that grow in between our bricks!!) Have fun making your pathways!! They always look soo good when they are done and there's nothing like the great feeling you get everytime you look at them and think that YOU are the one who made it!

Great, I am glad to hear that others have done this & it works. I have always wanted a garden with little paths all over the place, but I didn't want to have to mix & pour cement to do it. Plus I have really got to find a project for a large amount of these bricks as the huge pile of them in my yard is killing the lawn...guess the patch of what used to be grass under the bricks will have to be part of my path now lol:)

That is wonderful!! I love brick walkways.

That fabric barrier dosen`t seem to help me. The seeds just drop into the cracks from the top side.

I use a propane torch to kill any of the weeds between the bricks that I can`t pull up.