Today I made a path from nothing.

I'm not sure if this comes under the heading of "garden archaeology" or "miracle gardening".

It started when my Client asked me to tidy up the edges of the grass, where he had cut the lawn but couldn't get close to the edge of the low wall.

I started to clip away a neat edge, including the bare area where a pot has been standing all summer.

Having clipped the edges, I noticed that the pot had not killed off the grass below it, but had been standing on a stone.

"OK," I thought, "odd place to have a stone."

Poking or stabbing downwards with my trusty daisy grubber, I realised that there was stone all the way under the grass....

... which peeled up like a carpet.

Now, this is a phenomenon which I have observed in other places in this particular garden: the house used to have a very large garden, but the previous owners built another house on it, split the garden, and sold off the old house.

My Clients - in the "old" house - therefore have a rather odd-shaped garden, and there are signs of old paths running under the grass at odd angles here and there.

Up came the carpet of grass...

... all I had to do was put a neat edge on it, and run the hose over the stones to get rid of the loose earth.

Took me about ten minutes, including the hosing.

While I was at it, I lifted enough to make a narrow path leading from the main, modern patio to the bird feeder, so they can now fill it without having to walk on wet grass.

There you go, nice neat edge, clean little path, and it's easier to mow.

The Clients appeared, and shrieked with delight at my "instant" path.

Oh good! It's always a relief when you change something, and it goes down well.

Here's the finished effect.

(That post is the bird feeder, btw)

I offered to make the path wider if they preferred, but they decided to keep it narrow for now.

They don't know how old the original stone work is - presumably it was laid when the house was built, and I commented how funny it was to see what is, in effect, crazy paving but done in real stone.

Presumably this is what they were copying, in the 70s, when crazy paving was massively popular.

One day, I'll go round this garden marking out where there is paving under the grass... one day.