Step 5: Lay down the landscape fabric

Laying down the landscape fabric.
Photo: Kolin Smith
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Roll out a layer of landscape fabric over the compacted stone pack, shiny side up.

To contour the fabric around curves, make relief cuts along both the outside and inside edges. On the inside of the curve, overlap the fabric at the cuts. On the outside, allow the fabric to open up at the cuts.

Tip: Use spikes or pins to hold the fabric taut so it won't bunch up through the finish layer of gravel. You can also let the edging do double duty by installing it over the fabric and letting its spikes punch through.
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    EDGING: Three-inch edging is tall enough to contain a path with a couple of inches of stone. To line both sides of the path, you'll need enough edging to equal twice its length.

    GRAVEL: Most home centers carry gravel in bags of ½ or 1 cubic foot. Buying stone in bulk from a landscape center or stone yard is a better option for longer paths. For a 2-inch-deep layer of stone, you'll need about 5 cubic feet for every 10 feet of length on a 3-foot-wide path. View our gravel gallery, The Stone Yard.

    STONE PACK: Stone dust mixed with crushed ¾-inch stones. Because it gets tamped down, you'll need more pack than gravel—2 ½ inches to compact to 2 inches, or about 6 or 7 cubic feet to cover every 10 feet of path.

    LANDSCAPE FABRIC: A shiny black woven nylon that keeps weeds from coming up through the gravel and keeps the gravel from settling into the stone pack, landscape fabric comes in 3-foot-wide rolls.