You're right to be thinking carefully before you go ahead. If you decide after a season that you can't stand what you have chosen then you're stuck with it really.
Also, choose who lays it very carefully indeed, and if possible see some of their previous work, don't just take their word for it that they know what they're doing. Keep a close eye on progress, especially with any 'planting gaps' - you don't want them in any old place or you end up walking on the plants, so choose where you want them and mark carefully.
Old brick does work well. We used old brick from the demolition of a Victorian chimney in a previous house. By planting in the gaps as Doganjo says it really does soften the whole thing up. The bricks themselves had begun to exfoliate, which added to the charm. An advantage of brick, or of something like slates on their sides, is that you can create curves. A rectangular plan will always look more council made than one with curved edges, and maybe curved patterns within the design.
Here we went for irregularly placed (staggered) black split limestone which has a sort of naturally textured surface from when the rock was formed. We like it here, but it isn't black and it does look a bit more pavementish than we had intended. I think if we had chosen a (much) more expensive version we could have had it without any machine cutting of the edges, which are too sharp really - a champfered (sp?) edge looks better. The moss is growing on the mortar now which softens it a bit.
Our drive is laid of reclaimed granite cobbles from the streets of Edinburgh, and that does look nice, though perhaps not quite rustic enough for what you want. It's also impossible to walk on with high heels
I'm not a lover of crazy paving. It soon looks scruffy and scabby unless an expert has laid it. Too often it's just made of smashed up concrete paving slabs. You could though have the basic stones of granite to match your house. You have to match or contrast, not have something similar but not quite the same. I think crazy paving would be desperately tedious to weed in the spaces, and weeds grow even with the best done mortar. But think of all those irregular gaps to poke around in - endless.
Reclaimed granite flags which are several hundred years old are so beautiful and fit in anywhere, but you would break the bank buying them and break your back trying to lift them
Topic: Patio help please (Read 6088 times)
