How do I cover the concrete base?

[peasbody]

Hi all I’ve just had our garden patio done by a professional which looks great, however due to the weight of the slabs and the fact our garden was rather uneven we have been left with visible concrete around the edges (I will attach photos). Does anyone have any inspired ideas of how we can tidy this up? We also need to tidy up the back of the garden so could incorporate this.

Many thanks for your help (from a complete novice gardener!)

 

[Sean Regan]

Hi and welcome peasbody.

It looks like your builder has done a good job, the concrete will stop the bricks from ever moving.


Have some patience, the grass will eventually.. creep over the concrete. You'll be able to run an old serrated kitchen knife along the edge of the bricks to trim the grass which will try to grow over them too.

I've something similar between my lawn and my crazy York stone path. I use a strimmer along it now an again, to keep it straight.

 

[peasbody]

Hi and welcome peasbody.

It looks like your builder has done a good job, the concrete will stop the bricks from ever moving.


Have some patience, the grass will eventually.. creep over the concrete. You'll be able to run an old serrated kitchen knife along the edge of the bricks to trim the grass which will try to grow over them too.

I've something similar between my lawn and my crazy York stone path. I use a strimmer along it now an again, to keep it straight.


View attachment 89485

View attachment 89486

Thanks so much for your reassurance. I guess I just need to be patient then . Your garden looks wonderful! Any advice on how to get the grass as lush as yours? Also…what is the beautiful pink potted plant you have in the photo?

 

[Sean Regan]

Thanks so much for your reassurance. I guess I just need to be patient then . Your garden looks wonderful! Any advice on how to get the grass as lush as yours? Also…what is the beautiful pink potted plant you have in the photo?

Thanks for the kind words.

To aid the grass to cover the concrete, you could use a bit of soil/compost/grass seed mix and "dirty" the concrete down a bit, so it's less noticeable (visitors will probably hardly notice it at all) and will help the grass to spread.

The plant you can see is one of a pair of "tree" azaleas. We're "knee deep" in azaleas, rhodos, wisterias and clematis.
I cheated a bit there, as those photos are from two years ago and a bit later in the year. This year like many others, our lawn has suffered from the bad weather.

No bedding plants or hanging baskets. No time for them. I'm not a gardener, I'm not into "propagation," other than layering the odd azalea or rhodo. There's a lot of very able gardeners on this board who can answer any growing questions. I consider myself just a "garden manager." Too many other interests to get "really get stuck in."

The lawn is only just recovering. These photos I took today. Still a bit mossy down the left-hand side in places

It's also still very scruffy under the smaller acer palmatum, as it doesn't get any sun there. But I spread a soil/compost.grass seed mix a couple of weeks back and it's on its way to recovery.

I use Wilkinson's "weigh your own" grass seed and their cheap lawn food. I also treat moss patches along the long border which also is in the shade of the many rhodos and azaleas, with an iron sulphate solution (eBay).
Apart from that I try to keep off the lawn as much as possible as it's only small, we've no pets (apart from 'arry the 'edgehog) or kids at home. It's only a small garden, actually, only 85ft long and thirty feet at its widest point.


We're also into roses, twelve on the patio with the fountain and four on the old patio.

This area to the left was a 5ft deep 3000 gall koi pool I built in 1986, which I closed down in 2019. All the hard landscaping I'd done myself, back in the eighties, but I got a firm in to fill it in (20 tonnes of eco-friendly hasrdcore) and pave it over.

What you see was what I promised my wife, we'd have if I ever closed it down. Always have a long term plan.