The path to nowhere gets an extension!

Originally I just planted a large triangle of bushy plants around the base of the lychee tree.   As I live in the tropics they grew, and grew.  I put in a small path to get some access for trimming back, but never really liked the look of it - my little path to nowhere.   My grandson loves to rush through the garden and hide in "the forest", but at the end of the path he didn't stop, and I wondered how many plants were getting trampled.
This ANZAC day was a holiday from work, and as we sat with our morning coffee looking out at the garden I just knew that I was going to have to forge a new pathway through the forest.  The entrance was to be to the left of this photo....  jungle busting stuff.

 This is the entrance to the path at the other side.  I took the franzipani out of there - it didn't like all the shade, and moved the beehive ginger there - giving it more room to spread.  This was originally the path to nowhere - it just ended....

One of the objectives was to have access to all the plants for trimming, cutting back overgrown branches and simply admiring pretty flowers close up.  I removed one big red ginger plant, and after that the path found its way, with me tying plants back or moving them over just a little bit to one side.   Then I discovered that there were still large areas that had that dreadful landscape fabric underneath them!  What a silly thing that was to do! Lots of tugging, digging, standing in knee deep mulch, but I think I now have most of the fabric removed from the entire garden.    Originally I had thought the plants would develop roots underneath the fabric if I planted them into a hole, but that didn't work.  The soil is lovely though - wormy and moist and the mulch is woodsy and full of mycellium.  The landscape fabric has now found a home in the veggie garden path -  it does a great job there.  I throw non flowering weeds onto it and they dry and shrivel up and then can be put into the compost.  This is the first part of the path....

 Once the basic path was completed I thought about what the edges would be.  I do have lots of mondo grass so the edge closest to the tree is mondo.  I hope I am not over-using it in the garden, but I do love the edge that it provides and it works so well in my shady garden.    I tried some of the variegated mondo, but it is really struggling.  In the photo below you can see the middle part of the path viewed from the back fence.  On the edge furthest from the tree - the outside edge of the curve - I have put a few bricks.   I love the solid edge this has brought into the garden, and the ground is built up a bit behind it, creating a sunken path effect.  I am not sure if I can get the same bricks to finish that edge.   I did a bit of a repeating pattern of some cordelines and bromeliads, and filled in some areas with ground orchids, ferns and coleus.

Here you see the path as it leads out to the big gates.  

I laid cardboard over the path and then a layer of gravel - voila! While I was working there I noticed so many butterflies flitting around as they traveled from the geisha girl out the back to the ixora in the front.  I think my new path might have to be called butterfly alley :)