Your garden plot has a lot of bumps and landscape features, which you think will have to spend huge amounts of money to fix? Do not rush, take a closer look at your hills, moats, streams and swamps, maybe they are just what you need to create a real fairy garden! And how to turn an unsightly garden landscape into a beautiful, safe and functional garden plot using such a simple and original thing as a garden bridge, our article will tell.

Content

1. Garden Bridges: Features
2. Garden bridges: types video video
3. Metal bridge in the country
4. DIY metal bridge

Garden Bridges: Features

Garden bridges   This is a long-standing invention of mankind, which allows to decorate, delimit space, emphasize beauty and add functionality to any landscape.

  Wait, but I don’t have a pond or stream in a garden plot, continuous ditch pits, why do I need a bridge? - A person who is not familiar with all the possibilities of garden bridges may object.
  That is why, before talking about the types and creation of this miracle of design with our own hands, we will talk about the functions that garden bridges can perform.
In general, all garden bridges can and should be both functional and decorative elements of any garden.
  Functionality is usually understood as the direct purpose of the bridge, the ability to move from point A to point B from one shore to another using a specially organized bridge design.

Based on this definition, the following garden bridges can be distinguished:

- through a stream, canal or small pond, i.e., through a water obstacle;

- through a dry stream, moat, any other natural or artificial unevenness of the landscape;

The decorativeness of the garden bridge is as follows, 100% interwoven with its functionality:

- garden bridge path:this design may not be able to fulfill the direct purpose of the bridge, although the appearance of the real bridge is clearly guessed;

- garden bridge bench:such a bridge may well be a real bridge over a moat or stream, but at the same time, thanks to the structure of the steps, it can easily be used as an original bench.

- garden bridge hedge base: on the bridge itself or only parts of it, under it is a large number of diverse plants, both climbing and bush.

- garden bridge - decor:during the construction of such bridges, special attention is paid not so much to the functionality of the bridge itself, as to its appearance and its combination with the general concept, design of the garden.

Such a bridge in itself is already a work of art.

Garden bridges: types

Garden bridges are very diverse and there are many of them.

So, for example, in shape and location, all garden bridges can be:

- direct:  the simplest construction of a garden bridge, but from this, no less spectacular;

- arched:in the understanding of the absolute majority, this is what a real garden bridge should look like.

In this case, the arch can be of absolutely any radius.

- walkways - stones,lying right at the bottom of the stream and having the form of a fairly natural ford crossing;

- bridges - zigzags:  more often, of course, such bridges are made of wood, they are ideal for the Japanese garden.

According to the presence of handrails and their shape, the following types of garden bridges exist:

- without railing,  moreover, such a bridge can be either straight or arched;

- with railing on one side;

- with various, in height and openwork pattern and pattern, railings on both sides

and even with a gate to the bridge itself.

  With the choice of materials from which you can make a garden bridge, everything is also very diverse:

- from wood: the simplest, fastest and most accessible type of garden bridge available for almost anyone.

- stone and concrete:  Capital, but very beautiful view of the garden bridge, requiring a special scale of the garden.

- from modern materialssuch as deck boards, etc.

- from metal:  to this category of garden bridges we will also include garden bridges made with forging elements, as well as bridges made by combining various kinds of materials with metal. And we will talk about these types of garden bridges in more detail.

Metal bridge in the country

Why metal bridges are so good in the country, since we distinguish them in a separate, privileged category?

Metal bridges are

- durable, almost maintenance-free, in comparison with wooden, a kind of garden bridge;

- maximum strength and capitalism, but at the same time lightness and airiness, not cluttering up the space;

- An original design that blends perfectly with the concept of any garden, whether it be classic or modern;

But in other way, metal garden bridges    this and special chores:

- they are difficult enough to do on their own, without the appropriate experience and skills, and the material, especially if the bridge is forged;

- therefore, the cost of a metal bridge will be decent;

- as, by the way, and the mass, therefore, the place for the future installation of such a metal bridge requires careful preparation.

DIY metal bridge

DIY garden bridge is possible!
  And even if you yourself did not make your own metal garden bridge, then you will probably have to install it after they make it and deliver it to you.

In the case of installation of laying a garden bridge without capital fastening (such a bridge can always be removed or moved), all preparatory work may be limited to leveling, ramming and strengthening the banks of a stream or ditch, in case it is a dry stream.

And, in the case of metal bridges installed overhaul, special attention should be paid precisely to the preparation of the installation site of the bridge itself:
  The edges of the coast should be not only compacted and leveled, but also, in the place of laying the bridge, have a concrete base-support. A kind of foundation on which part of the beam of the bridge will lie and / or in which pillars of the bridge itself will be mounted.

Now that the bridge, or better to say, a metal frame with a railing, is installed, we mount the flooring. Most likely, the shape and type of the frame of the finished bridge already provides for the kind of flooring you conceived in advance.

If it is a tree, then everything is simple, because in the metal frame, you can drill holes and lay the appropriate size, according to the general idea, the wooden steps of the flooring.
  In the case of stone flooring, it will be necessary to additionally build the formwork and pour a layer of concrete of the required thickness, again, according to the idea and the strength of the bridge frame itself.

If the bridge is strong, and the base frame is properly prepared, then you can make a stone flooring from paving slabs.

Given that the metal garden bridge, in general, is more of a decorative structure, it is practically impossible to establish it poorly.

Therefore, we dare and admire!

Author: Sergey and Svetlana Khuentsov

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