The Casa has a flight of paved steps running down into the garden, railroad sleeper surrounds filled with brick paving and a gap at the back where it wasn't worth slicing up lots of bricks to fill a narrow channel. There's a bit of hardfill packed in there, but over time a layer of topsoil has accumulated and is getting deeper and more crowded with junk that self-seeds in there. This is it after yet another cleanout:

 

 

 

 

I don't want to just line it with a strip of ugly concrete so was thinking of getting a bag of builders mix, dampening it a bit, and mixing in a half-bag of leftover grout I've had sitting around. The idea isn't to make concrete but more a fortified hardfill that doesn't scatter all over the place when leaves on top of it get raked off.

 

 

It seems like a no-brainer, but I'm sure if I go to it right now someone will come along in the future and say "well, that looks pretty good, but did you think about using ...?", so I thought I'd run it past the peanut gallery here first.