Nice to see Sanitred is #1 in the Google search! I wish that had been the case 6 years ago when this thread was started! The thing with Permaflex is that it's really thin - strong, but thin. I did two coats but it doesn't have much of a thickness. It's the liquid rubber (the blue stuff) that has thickness and stretch. The other thing is that what they say about the bonding process is absolutely true. At any stage (or age) Permaflex/LRB will bond with itself. If you follow the instructions this stuff will work. I speak from experience on that because the first install I did 4 years ago did not follow the instructions in one section (under the rocks on the waterfall side) and that section cracked this past winter. The rest of the pond which was clean concrete held up perfectly and looked as if it had just been painted when we drained and cleaned it. I like the color choices too! I went with the beige. The photo shows the finished re-hab from June. The *only* part that is new Permaflex is the floor (one coat) and the back wall under the waterfall and channel. Everything else is a 4 year old installation

Very nice. Really like the rock shoals, DW has a very good eye. Using big rocks is smart. Once algae covers the rocks a bit they tend to disappear a bit, bigger rocks disappear less. Some things you might want to consider... It looks like there are some gaps in between rocks that could be filled with a little bit of mortar. I know the look you're going, you want natural not mortared rock wall, so you don't want to grout them all. But when they're underwater things change. Just like in natural gaps will fill with muck. And you won't be able to see these gaps as well even with no algae. Not a big deal but imo, better to fill with mortar. You can still leave deep gaps, but they can be filled a bit. At least as far as I can tell from the pictures. Not saying this is important at all. The cracking mortar isn't a big deal of course. For other readers... Reducing water in mortar reduces shrinkage. Like dry mashed potatoes. Two 1/2" coats would reduce shrinkage. Or doing small sections. Each section shrinks and then an adjacent section is done. The shrinkage crack would happen where it's thinnest, over the folds. You can fill the larger cracks, like say more than 1/16", if you liked. This is a good idea to lock it all down, but not super important. What is kind of important is to wait 3 or 4 weeks before filling with water. 4 weeks is best. You can wet it down right away, a little standing water would be OK. There is a lot of debate on whether keeping cement damp is needed. 30 years ago it was a requirement. Cement never stops curing and it does need some moisture. So to me, in summer, I do think it helps. And it's so easy being at the bottom of a pond. The 3 or 4 weeks are needed for the crystal structure to form enough to be fairly waterproof and to completely enclose the lime. If you add water too soon the lime can leach out and weaken the mortar a lot. People fear the lime leaching out and causing high pH and can be a small issue with uncured cement. But the weakening of the mortar is of more concern imo. Before filling the pond hose down everything. Mortar, rocks, liner, until there's a few inches of standing water. No reason to scrub anything or use anything other than water. Let that sit for 12 hours or longer. Pump out that water. Now you'd be ready to fill the pond. This wash down gets rid of dirt and mortar dust and gives any surface lime a chance to dissolve into the water. Some people might tell you to wash the mortar with acid to "remove the lime". An acid wash has the opposite effect. The surface of cement reacts with CO2 forming a kind of "rust" called calcite. The CO2 can be in the air or water. Calcite has a pH of about 7 and helps seal the cement beneath. An acid wash would dissolve the calcite leaving fresh brand new cement with a surface pH of 12. Formation of calcite is also why you don't want a lot of standing water during the cure. You want CO2 in the air getting to the cement.

lisa33, any chance you can post a photo showing a more long-distance view of your narrow beds? I agree with louisianagal that planting between pavers doesn't usually work with a narrow path, although thyme will take some traffic. But it won't take a lot, and requires a sunny site. It looks like your house is a light blue, which is a good color for backdropping plants although the chartreuse-y tones I use a lot of (we have a fair amount of partial shade so it brightens up those areas) wouldn't work so well. Some would, but you'd need to be careful about specific tones. But pink, purple, and white blooms, plus dark green or red leaf tones would all be perfect, with maybe more yellow-toned leaves/flowers - I'm thinking feverfew, for example. The colors of both flowers and foliage would be beautiful against a blue house and complement other plants as well: Another idea I've used for certain areas is using tall planters to add instant height to plants. I usually do it for really tender perennials - we do get some frost here although not much. For example, this is a 2' tall planter that would look gorgeous against a light blue house (it's dark blue with light blue streaks). It was on sale for $15 so I snapped up a couple. One holds an orange erysimum (wallflower). This holds a draecena, some mint and a silver lamium. It would be perfect in a narrow pathway to add some height: BTW, that's common variegated sage at the foot of that planter - if you have sufficient sun it's a nice little plant for folliage, has surprisingly pretty purple flower spikes, and is very cheap (at least here) to replace every year. ALthough the 'experts' say to never mix variegated plants, I do it all the time. Some of my prettiest combinations have come about through side-by-side variegated plants. They add a great deal of color and texture interest! HTH!

Don't waste your time with concrete from the hardware store. It is overkill for the scale of container you are talking about and weighs a ton. If you want something easy, use bagged mortar mix and add alkali resistant glass fibers which you can get online. That will make a decent glass fiber reinforced concrete (GFRC). It will be weighty but strong. You could add perlite to that to decreade the weight if you want. That will negatively impact strength but at this scale, that should not be too much of a problem. The most important thing to remember when working with concrete is that water is both your friend and enemy. You need water to get the reaction going and to cure properly, but too mich water will make the resulting concrete very very weak. Your best bet it to only get the mortar mix about as wet as damp sand and pack it forcefully into the form. If you can pour it, you have added way too much water for this application (or added a high range water reducer but that is a whole other discussion). It will harden up relatively quickly. I usually let it sit overnight and then remove the form, very carefully. The concrete is very fragile at this point. Then I put the pot in a trash bag and store it someplace for a month. It takes about a month in a humid environment for concrete to cure completely. Do not let it dry out at all during this time. It seems that the addition of sphagnum peat in the hypertufa recipes helps to neutralize the pH. Moss and algae seems to establish more quickly on those than on bagged concrete. That is however conjecture. I haven't had any problems with pH and concrete planters. If your intention is to make efficient use of the limited space on those shelves, concrete may not be the way to go. What you save by making the containers square, you lose by having to make the walls quite thick to make up for the lack of tensile strength in concrete. Glass fibers will go a long way in ammeliorating that though.