Our garden, May 28
Moderator: Chris_W
Our garden, May 28
This is the mid-season lull - most of the rhodo flowers are fading but other things will start to flower in a few weeks. http://www.pbase.com/embe/image/60941652
Very pretty, Herb! 
I love the path.
I love the path.Pat
My Hosta List
Keep your face always toward the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.
~ Walt Whitman
My Hosta List
Keep your face always toward the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind you.
~ Walt Whitman
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Nathalie23
- Posts: 1031
- Joined: Feb 17, 2006 10:08 pm
- Location: Quebec, Canada (zone 4) 46 25'/-72 35'
Wow, Herb! I don't know how I missed this before. Beautiful, just beautiful!
Linda P
Linda P
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten.....
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Latitude: 41° 51' 12.1572"
My Hosta List
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten.....
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Latitude: 41° 51' 12.1572"
My Hosta List
Thanks for all the nice comments.
I made the path from concrete, using a Walkmaker mold. At first the concrete was very pale - nearly white & altogether too bright, so I stained it with Iron Sulfate. My advice to anybody thinking of staining concrete with Iron Sulfate is - don't. Bad idea. Put Iron Sulphate out of your mind. Forget it. It gives concrete a horrible brilliant ochre color. It's not so bad when it's damp, but the moment it dries again, that glaring, bright ochre or orange color comes right back.
Eventually I managed to (more or less) conceal this horrible ochre color by smearing it with several layers of a slurry made with concrete topping mix. After about 7 years of weathering & of dust collecting in the patterning crevices, moss has started to grow in the crevices, and the weathering and the moss are helping the path look more established. They make the bits of ochre color still showing through less conspicuous.
As well as being too bright, the path started off without any edging. That looked untidy. So I added edges made from bricks. The bricks looked worse. So I dug a trench on each side of the path and filled it with crushed rock. It looked a bit better, but still not quite right.
Then I remembered seeing a path in a Japanese garden that was edged with lengths of Timber Bamboo. I couldn't get any Timber Bamboo, at least not at any reasonable price, so I tried landscape ties - they're treated to preserve them from rot, and they're just the right thickness. I widened the trench a bit & laid the landscape ties in it, so that there was a layer of crushed rock visible between them & the path.
At first, I stained the ties with an outdoor wood stain to give them some of the color of Bamboo, but it's since faded. I think I like faded better.
Herb
I made the path from concrete, using a Walkmaker mold. At first the concrete was very pale - nearly white & altogether too bright, so I stained it with Iron Sulfate. My advice to anybody thinking of staining concrete with Iron Sulfate is - don't. Bad idea. Put Iron Sulphate out of your mind. Forget it. It gives concrete a horrible brilliant ochre color. It's not so bad when it's damp, but the moment it dries again, that glaring, bright ochre or orange color comes right back.
Eventually I managed to (more or less) conceal this horrible ochre color by smearing it with several layers of a slurry made with concrete topping mix. After about 7 years of weathering & of dust collecting in the patterning crevices, moss has started to grow in the crevices, and the weathering and the moss are helping the path look more established. They make the bits of ochre color still showing through less conspicuous.
As well as being too bright, the path started off without any edging. That looked untidy. So I added edges made from bricks. The bricks looked worse. So I dug a trench on each side of the path and filled it with crushed rock. It looked a bit better, but still not quite right.
Then I remembered seeing a path in a Japanese garden that was edged with lengths of Timber Bamboo. I couldn't get any Timber Bamboo, at least not at any reasonable price, so I tried landscape ties - they're treated to preserve them from rot, and they're just the right thickness. I widened the trench a bit & laid the landscape ties in it, so that there was a layer of crushed rock visible between them & the path.
At first, I stained the ties with an outdoor wood stain to give them some of the color of Bamboo, but it's since faded. I think I like faded better.
Herb