Creative Concrete Landscape Edging and Pathway Ideas for Your Backyard

Are you looking for different ways to add beauty and functionality to your outdoor landscaping and entertainment areas? Design areas such as raised flower beds, pathways, patios, curbed edging, and much more. Decorative concrete is very versatile gives the home or business owner a plethora of choices and designs. Whether you're looking to build a spacious outdoor patio area or edge your landscape, decorative concrete will be a durable and beautiful choice.

Here are several decorative concrete ideas for you to jump-start your creativity:

• Stamped Concrete Edging
• Concrete pavers have been used for edging now, going on many years. The new style and extremely popular service is decorative concrete edging. This is where a crew lays a continuous, even flowing concrete edge to your landscape. A stamped pattern is then pressed into the edging, followed by expansion joints to allow for freezing and thawing. Then come the color and sealant, which gives the edging a natural look while providing protection and durability for many years to come. 

Stamped concrete isn't just pretty; it is very durable and can withstand the worst that nature can throw at it, with very little upkeep. Unlike plastic edging concrete won't wither or get brittle from the sun's ultraviolet rays. And unlike metal edging, concrete won't rust or bend.

• Raised Concrete Flower Beds 

Raised beds and outdoor entertainment structures have grown immensely in popularity over the years and can provide great contrast and beauty for outdoor entertainment areas or landscapes. Raised flower beds are great for installing a multi-level landscape design. These flower beds can be tied in with raised patios and pathways as well, giving your yard or landscape that extra added flare that will add great beauty to your property.

Concrete is an extremely useful product and can be used to mimic any natural surface. Combing raised flower beds with patios and pathways is just one example of the different combinations that can be used with decorative concrete. A quick google search can really help in getting the creative mind thinking in order to create the project of your dreams.

• Installing Winding Concrete Pathway

In essence, a concrete pathway is a relatively easy pour that will transform your outdoor landscape or backyard into a beautiful oasis. One added touch that really makes a decorative concrete pathway stand out is adding light and plants to the trail. A person can also add concrete or decorative benches to accent the path and provide sitting areas. Concrete can replicate any natural material, and using concrete to construct your path will reduce your cost and have less maintenance. You simply can't go wrong with a concrete patio.

• Add Lighting To Your Pathway

Adding lighting is one of the easiest additions you can make to your pathway and landscape that can really take the project to the next level. There are numerous lighting options available for landscapes and outdoor entertainment areas, from embedded LED lights to solar lights and many more. Lighting can be used to accent any outdoor feature or structure. Adding lighting also helps protect against accidents by providing a lighted path, patio, or other outdoor areas.

Whether you're looking to add curbed edging to accent your landscape, raised flower beds, a pathway, or even lighting to tie it all together. Mixing it up and using all the different decorative aspects to pull together a masterpiece is easily doable with today's concrete specialists.

How much does stamped concrete cost?

While the cost of stamped concrete will typically exceed that of bare concrete or asphalt, it is much cheaper than installing flagstone, brick, natural stone, or even precast pavers. The main driving factor in this is because all of those other materials are incredibly labor-intensive to install. Contractors find it much more economical to pour a concrete pad and then apply a stamp pattern that replicates and mimics any natural texture or surface. Also, keep in mind that there are other factors to consider when comparing prices between methods and materials such as:

• Maintenance. Stamped concrete is almost always going to require far less maintenance than pavers or natural stone. This may end up saving the home or business owner a lot of time and money over the years.
• Curb appeal. Whether you are installing a new stamped concrete driveway or a new patio, the curb appeal will be light years ahead of regular concrete. Stamped concrete can give concrete that much needs depth and color, which will stand out amongst all the other concrete structures in the area.

Is stamped concrete cheaper than concrete pavers?
Concrete pavers are very labor-intensive and time-consuming material to install. Typically pavers will cost anywhere between $4-20 per square foot to install. Stamped concrete is less expensive per square foot in many cases and can be installed much quicker than pavers, which lowers the overall cost.

Stamped concrete is very versatile.
Stamped concrete is a contractor's go to method when trying to mimic a natural texture without spending the big bucks that it typically takes to install. Stamped concrete can replicate and mimic any natural material that one would typically see installed on a project. Stamped concrete can mimic bricks, pavers, natural stone, flagstone, and even wood. Combined with the right colors, there is hardly any difference between the real material and the stamped concrete. On average stamped concrete will cost between $12-18 per square foot to install.
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 How to plan a new concrete driveway
Are you a home or business owner who is looking to install a new concrete driveway? If so, you have come to the right place to learn. Here we walk you through the steps of a new driveway installation.
One if the first things you will need to consider is, how much does a concrete driveway cost? We  will get to that in a later post but first we need to consider a few other criteria.

Permits
Each city and state require different permits and city codes before any concrete can be poured. In some states, the driveway's style can even make a difference whether or not you need a permit. Always check with your city offices to see whether or not you need a permit. Also, consider the neighborhood you live in as some have rules and regulations that you must abide by to install a new driveway.

Plan your driveways size, shape, and design
Designing your driveway layout before meeting with a qualified contractor will help ensure that you get the right layout and design pattern for your drive. It doesn't have to be perfect or to scale, but if you want and added areas or curves and design elements, it makes it much easier to put pen to paper and draw it out. You will want to include everything from length and width to design patterns and colors if you are looking for a custom decorative concrete design. Always remember that every added foot or design elements will increase the cost of the concrete driveway.
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Figure up how much concrete you need
Take the design and get some rough numbers to begin calculating how much concrete you will need. Doing this will put you ahead of the game when speaking with contractors about estimates. Having a rough estimate of your square footage multiplied by their price per sq ft will give you an excellent gauge of what you will be looking at. To determine your concrete needs, multiply the length by the width, multiply by .35, and then divide it by 27. The answer provided will be how many cubic yards of concrete it will take to complete your driveway. You may want to account for an extra 10% to account for spillage and mistakes.