GINA PARKINSON rolls up her sleeves and works out how to lay a garden path.

IT HAS been a busy time in our garden, because the plans I wrote about in this column a few weeks ago are now becoming a reality.

The first item to be tackled has been the path, which is essential to get people to the shed, back gate and to stand on when hanging out the washing.

This last item is a moot point because garden designers never seem to include one in their plans. Yet this is an invaluable tool in a household where the washing and drying of clothes is a daily task.

The original path was a series of stepping stones laid in the lawn, which I was able to reuse. This has kept the cost down to a minimum as we had a lot of frost resistant bricks used to edge the now defunct lawn available, as well as several York stone slabs given by a friend.

The only items we have had to buy so far have been a (generous) half ton each of hardcore and sand and three 25kg bags of cement. Walkers of Foss Islands Road expertly delivered these. The driver backed his lorry down our narrow, double parked road and used a hand crane to drop the bags into a tight space in the front garden. Delivery was free and the staff at the yard worked out how much was needed from the measurements I took in.

The path was dug out to 15-20cm deep allowing a 5cm deep layer each of hardcore and sand and cement mix.

The sand/cement bed was built up further depending on the thickness of the paving slabs and bricks; less was needed for the bricks, while more had to be laid for the thinner slabs.

I decided against laying the slabs on blobs of mortar because it will not have heavy use and past experience has shown that a sand bed can give a stable enough base for such a path.

Once the heavy work was done, the path went down easily. I had already laid it out temporarily to sort out the design and had decided to make it the width of a paving slab to avoid having to cut them.

Pebbles and old quarry tiles had been used to fill in the gap, with the whole area brushed with a dry mix of sand and cement to fill in the cracks, and watered in using a watering can.

This last job usually has to be repeated several times over a few days because the mix settles and hardens.

I have to admit to being daunted as I looked at the very large bags in our front garden last week. Now I see the path and can't quite believe I have managed to build it. The next job is a small paved area in front of the French windows.

Updated: 16:07 Friday, May 07, 2004