What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish? It sounds like you are after an alpine garden/path/drainage course, which isn't at all a comfortable mix of uses. If you have the stones, try laying out a few in the pattern you are planning, and *walk* on them. Ask other family members to do so also. Keeping to the stones isn't at all a natural gait, but takes paying attention and care with placing feet. Most people will probably end up walking on the non-stone parts of the path a great deal. And the desired fill material is not gravel. If you insist on calling it gravel, people will assume you are talking about gravel. The stones will move on a gravel base. Either sand or the material known to Agway here as Step 2. It has a lot of other names, crushed stone, stone dust, among others. It packs down to form a solid base. Woodchips do not break down into acidic soil. At least not according to the people who decompose things and them test them. Also moss isn't necessarily an acidophile. However, a soil mix of crushed stone and some of your native soil might work quite well. It just generally sounds like you need to do a lot more research into which plants you are interested in growing and what their needs are, and plan to make them a home where people won't be regularly walking on them. If all the property's drainage is going towards this object, both woodchips and stone chips are going to wash out. If you want a path, I'd plan on at least a hopscotch pattern (2,1,2), with the understanding that the plants are part of the path. If you want the area to be a planting bed, then decide which set of plants for specialized beds you are most interested in, research them, and prepare a bed for them. The current situation is total overkill for either of those plans. I'm not convinced I went deeper than 6" anywhere in my dry laid patio, and that was built with rock I dug up on the property, so they aren't dressed in any way.

Hi there, We did this around our potager. We dug down about 3-4 inches to level, used a hand tamper to compact and laid lanscape fabric to suppress weeds. It's held up nicely for four years so far. Few weeds root in the gravel, but easy to pull. We haven't had to top up the gravel yet, but may do so in a year or two. As to what to use, this terminology seems to differ by region. I've heard it called crusher run, road mulch, etc. You can ask for 'quarter inch minus" which means a mix of larger pieces (but no larger than 1/4" plus fines and small stuff). You do NOT want pea gravel or anything too large which is shifty underfoot and a pain to drive wheelbarrow through, etc. HOpe that helps.

The fabric is black and water passes right through it. I have purchased mine from Tri-County Landscape supply in Watsonville and Harmony Farm Supply in Sonoma county, but it should be available from most landscape suppliers. Yes I would have about an inch of the DG under the stepping stones as well as about the same up the sides of the stones which will lock them in place as the DG packs. The strands of the fabric are about 1/16 inch wide and flat black plastic. What I see in the garden centers looks like the size of common thread. Al

A paver pathway can be as simple as just laying down pavers or flagstones on the sod and cutting out the sod around them and removing it so they are flush. This can work just fine for a secondary, not heavily traveled path. If you want a more long-lasting, durable path that can take any sort of foot traffic, you may want to prep a bit more, including using a proper base and leveling carefully. Typically you want a compacted base material (gravel/crushed rock) of 4-6 inches and then a 1-2" layer of coarse sand. Lay your pavers on the sand, level and fill cracks with more sand - or if openly spaced, more crushed rock or pea gravel. I do recommend weed/landscape cloth as an underlayment for any hardscaping project but that's about its only valid use. I also recommend using rigid edging to define the pathway and adequately contain both the base, pavers and whatever surrounds them.