In old, romantic movies, one often saw couples strolling through picturesque gardens, replete with ornately trimmed bushes, blooming flowerbeds, sculptures and fountains. A stunning garden is the perfect extension to a beautiful residential, commercial or hotel space. In addition to lending visual and aesthetic appeal to your design, a well-tended lawn can be the ideal spot for outdoor events, whether on a sunny afternoon or on a cool autumn evening.

To make your garden suitable for frequent traffic, and to protect its surface, it is a great idea to create a path or a walkway that meanders through the garden. A walkway adds character to an otherwise flat landscape, and turns a dull patch of greenery into something extraordinary.

If you are thinking of building a walkway in your garden, plan carefully before you start digging up the grass! Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when adding a walkway to your garden.

Size of the Garden

Walkways look best in larger gardens, where they stretch from one end to the other and create a route around. However, you can add an elegant walkway to a small garden patch too, as long as you strike a balance between the space taken by the paving and what is left for grass, flowers and other features.

Layout

If the layout of your garden is linear, you may choose to have straight walkways that meet at right-angles. You can add garden lamps or small garden ornaments where they meet, for a little whimsical charm. Conversely, you can soften the angularity of your garden’s layout with a curvy, meandering path!

Style

Your walkway could be a stepping-stone style path, with squares or discs of stone placed at equally distances from each other in a neat pattern. Or perhaps you’d prefer a loosely paved walkway, lined with gravel? Other styles include stone, brick and tile walkways; more on those in the next section.

Material

The material you build your walkway with is the most important element in your planning, and you have many options to choose from. You could create a boardwalk-style wooden pathway with sturdy pallets, or use hard red bricks for a rustic look. Gravel, as mentioned above, is another popular and inexpensive paving idea.

However, they each have their disadvantages, too. Gravel is rough underfoot, and prone to scattering and erosion. It can also become a host for weeds in an otherwise well-looked-after garden. Wood, bricks and relatively soft stones like limestone and marble cannot withstand harsh weather conditions for too long, and will require frequent maintenance or regular replacement.

The solution to all of these concerns is a durable, versatile natural stone, such as Serpentine. Non-porous and hardy, Serpentine can endure rain, constant exposure to the sun, frequent traffic as well as exposure to acidic substances. It is available in polished and matte finishes, both of which have a singular appeal, and it can be shaped in various ways, depending on the style you choose for your walkway. This green stone is emerging as a stylish new trend because of its strength and varied applications.