Tarmac path meets Zen Garden ideas.

[UrbanGreen]

We are going to make a Zen Garden in our back garden. There is currently a tarmac footpath alongside a lawn that is going to become the Zen Garden. So there will be white stones instead of the lawn but as you can hopefully see from the attached pictures I need to make repairs to the tarmac path edging. Had the concrete edges been standard ones then I would probably just have reset them. As it most of them if not all need cutting down to a suitable size. The lawn used to be about 14 inches higher with a polytunnel on the top. I scrapped the polytunnel and dropped the lawn down to the tarmac level and just buried the pavers lower in the ground. So do I cut the pavers down. I don’t have tools for that so probably not worth me doing it. I could buy new ones of the right size or could I put metal edging in to keep the tarmac and the pea gravel white stones apart. I’m trying to keep the cost down too. Any suggestions?

 

[UrbanGreen]

Update: I think my best option is probably to repair the existing edge bit by bit. Shore up the kerb edging and progress slowly. I was fancying a metal edge between the tarmac and gravel. Cost and effort is going to be prohibitive. So I’ll try to make the best of what I have on site.

 

[ericmark]

I had to look up Zen Garden, at least it does not need rain. I also had the existing tarmac which needed repairing, I started with a weed burning electric hot air gun, burnt off the weeds, then filled holes with cold fill tarmac, first bag it was cold, and it was a pain to lay, and got walked into the flat, second bag a lot warmer, and far easier to lay, but still not easy, and I found a plate of metal to keep it flat and a hammer on the metal plate seemed to work better than hammer direct, it got it flatter.

However in hindsight, using chemical weed killer first would have been better, I have had to go around spraying weeds, as they poked through the new tarmac.

Also, I really need something, so all is the same colour, it has repaired the holes OK, but the repairs stand out, not so bad on a drive, but for a decorative area, does not look too good.

It will do what I want, and stop the drive getting worse, looks better than clumps of dandelions on the drive, but it does not look too good with different colours. New tarmac is very black.