I know exactly why this is called hardscaping ---- It's hard! 3 weekends of back breaking work. Here's our new path through our perennial garden.We're planning to plan creeping thyme in between the stones and bring the bed right down to the path.
My one tip for those doing their own - we tried two bases - one was a crushed gravel and the other was standard "base" which was mostly sand a small stones. The crushed gravel was about 2X as much, but it formed a based that was closed to concrete. Well worth the extra money.
We did about 1/10th of the path cutting sod by hand and the other 9/10th with a sod cutter. Never again will i cut sod by hand. A power sod cutter is ever bit the beast you have read about. They are not for the faint of hard and they need two good size people to get it loaded/unloaded and use it. Once going, it goes as fast as cutting your lawn.
