How to Design Flagstone
Flagstone provides a beautiful and natural walkway or patio for your home landscape. Designing a flagstone display can be as simple as drawing a design showing where you want them if you're laying precut interlocking flagstones. If you are designing a more free-form flagstone layout using natural flagstone or concrete pieces, you may simply have to go out in the backyard and lay the stones where you want them, assembling them like a big jigsaw puzzle. Here we'll talk about the more difficult problem of creating with natural stone in odd shaped pieces. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Hand truck
- Flagstones or concrete pieces
- Bag of lime and scoop
- Shovel
- Pick
- Rake
- Roto-tiller
Instructions
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Creating the Layout
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Mark the edges of the walkway or patio where you wish it to be with white powder such as lime or athletic field marker. Trickle the white powder along the edges of the area where the stones will be laid. This gives you a frame within which to assemble the pieces of your flagstone puzzle.
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Dig out and level the inside of the marked area before laying the flagstones, but only if you will be setting the stones into the ground rather than leaving them on the surface and filling in around them. This will save you having to remove the stones again to set them in the ground. One way to do this is to get a tiller and till up the ground, then use a rake and shovel to move aside the earth from the shallow trench where the stones will go. You can do it with the pick and shovel and then rake it level, but that's a good deal harder to do.
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Move the flagstones into position using a hand truck to save your back (especially if using large stones or concrete pieces). For truly natural, random flagstones, place the pieces into the marked area, fitting them together like a rough jigsaw puzzle. You may have to shift pieces around to get a better fit, but for this sort of flagstone work, irregular gaps between pieces add to the charm of the design. Fitted flagstones only fit together a certain way. For those, simply follow the layout design that comes with the stones.
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Finish the entire layout before you start setting the stones. As your design grows, you may be tempted to start setting the stones in areas that you've already laid out. Don't do it. As you lay the pieces, you will find that the stones become shifted a little from the places you laid them out. You may find you have to swap out different or smaller shapes to restore the flagstone layout. Having the entire design already in place forces you to make only small adjustments to your layout that restores the original pattern.
Having a completed layout forces you to keep gaps between the flagstones relatively uniform and to correct mistakes rather than going with the flow. As you set the stones in place and pack the gravel or earth between them, you don't want to look back and find your flagstones have gradually drifted apart like an ice flow breaking up. This can occur if you set the stones "as-you-go." -
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Leave the stones in place for a day or so before you start setting them. It's easier to make the decision to pull up and relay a bad section at the beginning of a fresh day when you have some energy. Sleeping on it allows you to look at your design with fresh eyes and find problems or unattractive settings more easily.
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Set the stones. This is where you'll need that pick, shovel and garden rake again. Whether you lay pea gravel around the flags or sand, earth, mortar or concrete, you'll have a lovely natural looking walkway. The imperfections of flagstones that aren't designed to be perfectly "fitted" only add to the charm of your backyard display.
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Tips & Warnings
If you're setting the stones, dig the area first before laying out the design. Lift with your knees, save your back. Better yet, use the hand truck and avoid lifting as much as possible. If you are setting the stones by yourself, set yourself a goal to lay a reasonable number per day. Don't get excited and try to do the job all in one day (unless you're a 22-year-old weightlifter with awesome pecs--then be my guest).
Do a rough estimate of how many stones you'll need. Look at the stone sizes first and then at the area to be filled. Guess, but then order extra stones. Make sure you can take back any you don't use
