Found Paver Walkway - Behind Yew Hedge - July 2020

We have an easement behind our property that buffers us from the neighbors to the West.  In that easement we keep our 3-bin compost setup and left most of the rest of it to 'go natural'.  The easement runs the entire block and connects the big pond on the south of our neighborhood to territories to the north, so we've seen critters of all types using the easement to navigate.

Recently, our neighbors to the West decided to clean up the easement - and it seems that the folks that they hired to clean the place up also worked our side.  They removed a lot of Buckthorn, trimmed up some of the more valuable trees (think Maples and Walnuts) and picked up a bunch of debris that has appeared over the years.

They also uncovered a bunch of stones and pavers.  And, (lucky for us) stacked a whole bunch of them up right outside our fence gate.  There are flagstones of various sizes, but also five round pavers and eight square pavers.  These have 'pebbles' embedded in the top of them, but are cast concrete, I think.

The stack of stones and pavers sat there for a few weeks when I remembered that I had an item on my 2020 To-Do list about starting a walk-way behind the yews.

3. Get the walkway installed/spec'd in behind the Yews along with some other plantings. Or start it on the north side behind the Mighty Oak.

When I check'd in on my progress on the list last month, I had 13 of the 25 tasks marked off.

The photo at the top shows where I've placed some of those pavers from the easement - behind the yew hedge - which you can see on the right side of the photo.  I'm not sure that this counts as 'installed', but I'm thinking it is a start.  What I'd like is a metal-edged-lined path with decomposed granite like this, but that is a longer-term vision perhaps.  The first step (for me, at least) is to get these pavers in, start to use them to navigate this area.  Then, add edging and the granite as part of a bulk material order.

I mulched the Yew Hedge this year and threw down wood chips on the back bed of the yard that you can see in the photo above, but there isn't a lot of definition to the bed that would come from metal edging.

Speaking of edging, I have this metal hoop-like edge from Luxembourg Gardens in Paris as one example and this much simpler brick edge that could work for this area as well.  At $0.58 per paver brick for 8" - so $0.87 per linear foot.  I wonder if you would need to put down edging to keep the pavers in place?  If so, that's about $16 for twenty feet.  Or, $0.80 per foot.

Metal edging comes in 8' sections that are 4" tall for about $10.  That's $1.25 per linear foot.

If this path is 60 feet long (double sided), that's 120 linear feet needed of edging.

In pavers - with no edge:  120 x $0.87 = $104.40.
In pavers with edge:  (120 x $0.87) + (120 x $0.80) = $204.40
Metal edging:  120 x $1.25 = $150.00

So, pavers are cheapest option, but leave open the question of edging to lock the pavers in.

The weight and portability factor isn't represented in this pricing discussion, but I know that hauling back 180 pavers in a wheel barrow is going to be a lot more work than carrying 15 packs of edging that weigh eight pounds a piece back to this area.

Seems like a no-brainer, right?