a new brick walkway through my garden

by Kaylah Stroup

We added a brick walkway through my garden. I AM OBSESSED.

drone garden view June 2021

Back in 2021, I added the first of many gardens to our yard. It all started with this handmade arbor that I wanted to grow clematis on and from there the idea of a massive circle shaped bed was born.

My plan had always been to put large flat rocks on the inside so that I wouldn’t have to mow it. I was in no rush though. I didn’t really feel like sourcing the rocks. Even though my dad will always let me steal rocks from him that still meant finding the perfect ones, hauling tons of them and then figuring out how to puzzle piece them together. It was a project that I just kept pushing to the side.

Then, early spring of this year, my husband and I randomly decided our fire pit needed a makeover. A weekend’s worth of work and it turned out BEAUTIFUL. I jokingly said “we should do my garden next!” thinking it was just too big of an area or that we’d never actually have enough bricks.

Well, turns out once the idea was in my brain I couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t recall if it was the next weekend we started or not but either way, we got right to work making it happen as soon as possible. The whole flat rock idea now seemed so silly.

brick garden path

About 85 to 90% of the bricks we used were sourced from our own yard.

Shortly after we moved in we discovered a hidden patio near the house. It had completely grown over with grass. I spent a huge chunk of time uncovering the patio before I finally decided that I didn’t want to keep it as is. It was a bit of a tripping hazard and not really in a spot that we’d use at this point in time. I painstakingly dug up all the bricks and stacked them on our woods line.

I was able to find a newspaper article about the folks who laid the aforementioned patio and it seems like they really truly loved this house. Everything I’ve read about their time here just makes it feel like they poured themselves into this place. I like knowing that I’m able to give these bricks a new life and one that is so near and dear to my heart. It sort of feels like paying tribute to them in some strange way, ya know?

The other 10 to 15% of bricks came from Facebook marketplace. I found a gal giving away bricks (FREEEE!) so I ended up grabbing two Jeep loads of bricks from her. She wasn’t home when I picked up the bricks but a neighbor wandered over, asked me a few questions and then proceeded to give me some history on the house and garden I was gathering the bricks from. Apparently the previous owner of the house was an older gentleman who had suffered a stroke and lost the ability to use one of his arms. That didn’t stop him from laying all these bricks by himself though. My goodness, let me tell you, there were a ton of bricks too. More than I could ever manage to bring home. The neighbor was sad to see his hardwork torn up like this.

I obviously love how rad this ended up looking but as you can guess, I also love how sentimental the materials are. I have no idea who the man with the brick garden was but I think it’s really cool that his materials could come to my home and make something so special for me.

brick garden path

It took a couple of weekends worth of work mostly because it was just too darn hot to work for very long. All the hard sweaty work was so worth it though! The whole project turned out even better than I could have ever imagined. It was one of those projects where when you finally step back and look at it you think “Oh, this is how it was always supposed to look!”

Adding six rows of bricks inside my garden bed opened up a few inches around the entire interior. Of course I also got a decently sized circle in the center to plant in as well! So, it looks way prettier and I got more room for flowers. A win/win, right!?

I’m still working on filling in the new interior bed but it’s coming along quite nicely. Honestly, a lot more quickly than I thought I would. I thought I was going to have self control when it came to plants this year but… nah.

I absolutely could not be happier with how this bed is turning out. Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined this being mine. Literally every single day I look at it and think ‘WOW!

left 2021 // right 2023

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