Stone edging over a brick border?

[petar]

Hi there,

In our backyard, we have a curved brick border which separates the lawn area from the surrounding bare soil (where we have fruit trees growing) along the boundaries of our property. Over the years, the brick border has become uneven and has sunken in some places, so in some areas it is barely even visible, since it has fallen beneath the height of the soil (the actual lawn area has become uneven due to sinking as well). The actual border is mortared and is only one brick high.

Being the way it is now, the brick border serves no purpose, since it no longer separates the lawn area from the surrounding soil. We are looking at some ways of solving this. One idea is to use bluestone blocks to create a raised bed style of border. I think this would only need to be one stone in height.

We have a few questions. Can we leave the existing brick border in place, and install the bluestone blocks over the top? If so, should we use mortar (bonding the stones to the top of the bricks) or simply use the “dry” method and place the stones on some gravel or sand, above the existing bricks?

Thanks for any suggestions,
Pete

[kiwirich]

Given the uneven nature of the existing brickwork and the fact its height I would remove it beforehand.

[mirz]

true, if bricks border in uneven then stone border would be in same trouble. in my opinion it would better to get rid of bricks first then put some crushed rock and make it even then go with stones.

[Planned LScape]

Yes, fix the problem of the sinking bricks otherwise you'll be back to square 1 again.

Remove the old bricks and excavate down 50mm and put in some crushed rock and compact, or more if the soil there is soft. Then re-lay.

The only thing with a raised border is you'll have to brush cut the sides that grow long up the raised edging. You could re-lay the sides to be slightly lower than grass height so you can run the mower wheel over the edge and cut all the way to the edge of the lawn.