I have an existing brick border that spans the back yard to define a flower bed and other stuff. As you can see from the pic, this part of my grass is getting roasted in the central texas heat, and I've just kinda let it go. This space never grows well as my sprinkler heads are place in such a way it doesn't get much water over here. I have roses in the bed now, and they do ok not great (soil problem as well). Had an idea...

In addition to fixing my sprinklers, I was thinking why not extend this brick pattern to essentially follow the line on this dead area, curving back to the fence as it already does and then I can plant some stuff along the fence. Trying not to have to maintain so much St Aug any more.

I have plenty of extra brick, so my questions is:

Do I need to put down a cement pad first, let it dry (creating a "foundation") then come again with bricks/mortar on top, or do I drop fresh cement into the ground and just lay bricks on it and just make my way over that way?

I know there is got to be concrete underneath - my question was more about the sequence..do I lay a sort of concrete pad down, let it dry and come back and add brick, or can I do it all at once. Digging it up I don't understand how that tells me the process.

CapCity makes me guess this location is near Austin and thus may have more docile soils than expansive clay Aggieland which may exclude you being forced onto reif.conc as a base ... however thick that debate may become. What ever cracks in your neighborhood would be judged as not thick enough and going the other way, the Red bag from Quikrete might be sufficient ... am still guessing w/no soils report, no existing data on what's working for you now.

Suggest you Google foundations for pavers where they will explore mostly sand base options but since Aggieland soils move around so much, would tend toward gravel/sand bases if not reif.conc.

Depth is usually key to being stabile, thus not telegraphing cracks/movement onto the masonry visible surfaces.
Deeper = less moisture variations, thus less supporting soils movement.
Since you will not enjoy a wide footprint being stable ala a large section of pavers, you might need to dig deeper to hope for same in such a narrow strip.


Tangent: as for me, the solution would not include extending the masonry border.
> evergreen vines on fence
> frontal area something akin to pampas grass, needing no border & selected for USDA Zone, water/soil pH & moisture, sun ... recommendations from a local garden radio show or 5-star nursery after seeing this photo & map w/North arrow, drainage arrows.


Hopefully you will good advice from Apache some day .....

Yes austin. Bricks that are there have been there at least 15-20 yrs and have held up well…reason I want to extend the bricks is because I have a pile of them and I want to get rid of them, plus I am tired of trying to constantly resuscitate this area of the lawn. But appreciate the ideas, that is just where my head is at.

To answer OP question. Wet concrete is too soft to work with between the bricks, so let it dry and then come back with motar for the bricks. Wet concrete is like pancake batter and mortar is like cake icing.

It looks pretty flat, with partial sun. Raised garden bed (since you mention the soil isn't great)?

I put down 110 of some edge stones (ring around a tree and flower bed) with some edgers that interlock a bit. I can't even imagine doing that with a concrete base, plus mortaring between them. I also wanted to keep my mulch from washing away so they are only partially in the ground. Your existing is almost flush.

I'm in similar thin clay and soils. I built this recently but since it is vertical and I didn't want mortar, I just dug a trench and grove, and laid my base brick on top of concrete mix.

Agree with others, probably want a concrete base and then place mortar. You have to work a little quicker with the mortar, it will dry out depending on the heat since it's more icing than batter. Then clean up your brick surface once set down.

another idea I had...we have the nice large brick columns with leuder stone caps on them, that run the outside of our elevated deck on the corners and staircase...the tree in the yard with nothing around if perhaps I could use bricks and caps around it in some fashion - like maybe a 6x6 square, and it would match these columns, make the yard a bit more cohesive.

Question - there would need to be something extra in the inside wall of the bricks, to give it some stability and provide the leuder caps to sit on, right? Do they basically make a cinder block wall behind it and sort of veneer the bricks to it, or maybe not cinder just any landscape stone?

I don't have enough brick to do two-deep, so was thinking you just use something else.

maybe i'm in the minority...but i don't like either idea. the brick ground border seems too 1998 to me. and i wouldn't use that same brick to build something around the tree either...i feel like that would look weird.

just my 0.02

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Digging it up I don't understand how that tells me the process.

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If it was done monolithically, the bricks won't lift up off the concrete base. If done separately, the bricks should be able to lift up off the base.

I would think anyway.

We had these done a few weeks ago. The guy dug out my grass about 3 inches, put down a layer of concrete, let it set a bit and put the stones into the partially wet concrete. He then let that first layer dry overnight and then came back and laid the rest.

I'm not sure if that was by design or if he just had to make multiple trips to get stone.

very nice but please don't fill those tree wells

My plan is to xeriscape all the beds and with drought resistant vegetation and cap all the irrigation.

The trees will keep their dedicated irrigation and get some stone in the beds.

They are mostly to make it easier to edge.