I have seen it look good and I have seen it look horrible. The examples that looked good did not have the top of the cap stones exposed (and what was exposed was rough and not the smoothed side) so you would not shatter the illusion right away. Those that looked bad were really low retaining walls that you looked right down on and could see the finished side of the concrete right there. Those were not good at all.
Try dry-stacking some with the other stones mixed in to see if it looks good or looks strange. If there is too much contrast between natural and the re-crete stones ... it might look kinda odd.

Fireraven9
Nescafé no es café. (Instant coffee is not coffee.) -- Mexican saying

I have seen a very nice patio done with recylced cncrete made to look like flagstone patio. That is it was irregular pieces of concrete with small groundcovers growing between the cracks. I think what made it work was the original concrete was poured 50-60 years ago and was very high quality....almost looked like conglomerate stone it had alot of rounded pebbles in it. It seems modern concrete is tacky...not sure why probably because the contractor is skimping on something. I noticed the steps/sidewalk poured just one year ago down the steet are alreading crumbling.

i have also seen some nice retaining walls made of concrete...check out Ann Lovejoy's book Organic Gardening School....has great photos of just such a wall.

Claire

I have seen it used as pavers and it looked great. If you want, you can give it more variation in color by applying a stain.

I must tell you that I have never used concrete to build retaining walls, but I do have a few thoughts. I always thought that if I ever did use concrete that I would use Ironite to stain the concrete a nice dark rust color. Also if you are planning on the wall being more than a couple of feet high you want to slant the wall into the bank to let gravity help in holding the wall. I would also dig a trench and use some crushed stone to start with and a couple of layers of concrete below ground level to give your wall some support at the base of the wall.
Bill

I have a broken concrete patio that came with the house. I do like the looks of it since it is the "older" concrete. The troubles I have with it are:
1. can't find anything that will grow in the cracks. Too shady for most and not shady enough for moss.
2. I wish it were larger...oh, well! As if I could ever match it.
3. I think I must get sled based chairs. The ones with 4 legs are a pain because they can't slide and get caught in the cracks.

There are a few designers here in California that have worked with cracked concrete in making nice looking patios and walls.

Some of it comes off looking really quite nice while other installs look , er, well, sort of junky.

I think the secret lies in how you plant it out, how well the concrete is weathered and what other elements were used in conjunction with the lay , such as in the install of small interesting complimentary colored stones, tiles, stain washing, and of course the planting.

If you do a google search you might come up with the name of Chris Rosmini in so. cal. - she uses this technique a lot - with a various amount of great to just OK success.
And at Planet Horticulture .com , they usually always nail it right on the head when using old recycled concrete in their designs, but note how they use it, the color variations and the surrounding plantings.
I think this is how they pull it off and make their compositions sing.

Also on their website ( which is WONDERFUL ) they give info on how to stain the concrete with and Iron sulfate mix. .. very appealing.

The walkways in our first garden were made from a busted-up concrete driveway that we were able to scrounge. It really looked good, and we often got complements on it. It went well with the informal look of the garden, which was mostly native plants.

We have used broken concrete as edging to hold in dirt for raised flower beds. Then I plant something that will drape over the concrete softening it and the flowers grab all the attention. Just my 2 cents worth. Robbie

I did a search on "broken concrete patio" and came up with this posting from a year ago. Hoping one of you helpful people might be able to answer my question. Follow-up responses to the original post talked about the difference between nice, older concrete that looks like conglomerate stone, and newer, cheap concrete. I'm wondering if I can get more of a description of what's considered good concrete.

My existing patio is probably 50 years old. It's 4x4 slabs of concrete with rotting wooden boards in between. I'm thinking of tearing it all out, then cutting up the concrete to make irregularly shaped pavers so that I could create a flagstone-type patio on sand, with small plantings in between.

So I just wonder: how do I know if I have the nicer-looking concrete or the cheesy concrete? (Or is it all a matter of opinion?)

Also, I've heard several times about staining concrete with iron sulfate, but I might be interested in a different color. Have folks used other stains to get different colors, like something blue-ish as opposed to rust? Or would that also look weird?

At the stores like HD, Lowes, etc., you can purchase concrete stain and colorants...use a sealer over/with them if you want it to last. It can be expensive though. I got lucky and worked for a manufacturer, and was told to take the old stock home. I asked the "mad professor" there, and he said most of the stain and colors are good just about forever. So look around and see if they are discounting any that are past the use by date. Just keep shaking that little container, and shake, and shake....! I'm looking for a place to salvage some broken concrete to do a large patio in our backyard....any ideas where I can get it?
Happy Gardening,
Raven

Gosh, my husband and I just finished a patio job using concrete slabs. I think it went very well. We used different sizes of slabs, set it in pebbles and a variety of smooth river stones and planted lots of low growing plants in between. We were aiming for the old european look without the price of excessively expensive interlocking pavers.

By the way, those colorants and stains may not last forever due to foot traffic so be aware of that. These may require several coatings of sealant. This I found out through our local stone supplier that even the expensive manmade 'natural stone' slabs which is only concrete slabs with a nice finish, will eventually give in to foot traffic.

50 year old concrete? Who knows.

Howevre, breaking it up and re-assembling the patio in broken squares with sand or gravel and plant sin the cracks sounds interesting. YOU can premanentlystain the concrete (google for acid stain cincrete)

interesting that you should post that question...I watched a nursing home be demolished and the grounds left in a heaping pile of broken concrete. I've driven by that pile, wondering if something couldn't be done with it. All building supplies were carried off, with the end of the tear down. It's chainlinked off to the general public with no name of construction co. in sight. I have a rather medium steep hill, behind that house, that would look just wonderful, terraced. I'd also thought of the rounded scooped look, for the border. To allow room, for a barbeque grill, to be built into the low wall. I'll have to figure a way to track down, just who did the work there.

Becky, .(*_*).

I've used several chunks to round out a stone path which had some gaps, and I can't tell the difference off hand. I also used three very large slabs at the foot of my steps. The slabs were heavy, they don't shift under foot.

What I like about re-crete is the mostly uniform thickness. And the ablity to break it into workable chunks. I haven't tried staining it yet. I've seen a stacked concrete wall that was really quite interesting. It would have been prettier if they had knocked off the edges rounding them off a bit.

I say, if it's free, use it! Don't let anything go to waste, if you can find any type of use for it. I've got stones, old bricks and re-crete in my path and it looks pretty good.

Kitty, Scotch to the end!

Forty-six years ago we had a new house built on what was locally called, "the sand hill". The builder had to go way down to find a solid base for the foundation, so that, in effect, we had two levels of basement. the first one was filled and the 'real' basement sat on top of the buried walls. This gives you an idea of how high up we were from the service lane that ran behind our place.

We had two levels for our back yard. about five feet up from the lane for the lower yard level, and then another five feet up to the top level.

All the fill to the top level,one step below the back door was clean sand.We had the city drop free truck loads of broken concrete from various jobs they were doing. It took one summer, but we put up dry concrete walls, not only twice X five ft.across the 175 foot back, but seven feet high along one side for 200 ft.

It looked great then, and it is still looking great 46 years later. I filled in all the small spaces with small rocks and soil, and planted hens and chickens, creeping thyme, and other creeping herbs and sedum.

For the first year or so there was a small problem with sand washing out during heavy summer rain storms, but I just kept re-filling with all kinds of things, such as :corn cobs, rags, newspapers, and so on.

We set the pieces in so that the broken flat sides were all facing out. They were set evenly, and where support was need to keep the row even, we just used sand to build up an edge. You'd think the sand would wash out, but whether it did or, there was no sagging or dropping of individual blocks. Sometimes a small chunk of concrete would be used a a prop.

It looked beautiful, and it did not look like 'cement'.
I'd advise anyone needing a wall to go for it with broken concrete.

Hanako2

We use broken concrete all the time to make retaining walls, although it must be the OLD concrete before they put the rebar and reinforced metal screening in the cement.
The end results are GREAT! Of course we shape each piece, after a period of time people think the walls are made of limestone!
We love it as it comes to us for FREE and we sell it back as a finished product! I have no hesitations on using broken concrete!

I think there was an earlier discussion on staining concrete, you might still find it in the Google caches. I believe someone said the only trouble with staining concrete was that you need to be careful where you do it, the stuff kills plants. And of course, as mentioned many of the stains need to be sealed periodically.

I have awalk of broken concrete, and i thought it was kind of clutzy looking until i got irish moss growing inbetween the peices. I think it is called arneria, and it looks like lush moss, and grows easily in shade or part sun.

The trick in using recycled concrete is mixing in materials that have more integrity. I have done a lot of garden edging using several kinds of natural stone, brick and concrete. I think the results are fabulous, the concrete Âabsorbs the integrity of the higher quality materials.

1) very eco- friendly. which is reason enough for me to use it.

2) like any material, it's how you use it that determines how it looks...I've seen expensive basalt come off looking like junk because they were used poorly, with no sense of placement or use of color.

3) even if you don't like the look of it, it is still darned useful for the bottom rank of stone walls (where it's covered by the lawn, or plants) because it makes for a nice heavy, stable foundation. mine own garden beds are trimmed out with a row of busted concrete topped with local shale chunks...total cost under $100, figuring the time to pick proper pieces and shuttle them from the building site to my house in loads small enough not to upset my poor old saturn ; )

I would never ever thought that recycled concrete would look nice unless I had seen it with my own eyes. I did see some very simple concrete work in Altadena, Ca and the result was very nice- more interesting than most paved bricks- even old bricks.

But it was older concrete. The older concrete I've seen has bits and flecks of crushed stone in it.
And it did have moss on it which made it look even nicer and more natural.

I used recycled concrete from my neighbors driveway to edge my garden beds in the back of the house. It's the older stuff with chunky pieces of rock in it. I only took pieces that were broken all the way around, or at the very least, pieces that you could flip to show the rough side. I left any pieces that had perfect edges. It looks really nice. I've got a few areas where Sedum is creeping over the sides and it looks very attractive.

I also just finished a loose fill patio and walkway which snakes around the side of the house. I edged it with larger pieces of recycled concrete. Worked like a charm and looks great. Holds in the loose fill and blends with the naturalized shade garden.

The recycled concrete is a bit too rustic for the front beds, but it works just fine in the casual backyard.

Alex

I brokeup the old slab from a long ago garage to use as blocks for building 'stone' edging in my back yard. The walls are between 2 and 3 'chunks' tall-- about 12 to 15
inches. the bottom course is barely visible. Where i've run
into stabilty problems a bit of our heavy clay soil usually
works to level things. If that doesn't solve the problem
I usually toss in a bit of mortar when i remember. After
10 years with dirt, moss and algae, and plants growing
they look like field stone walls that are dry laid. You
need to be careful to use old slabs with out rebar and
try to get slabs of even thickness.
2 years ago my neighbors had thir drive re done and I asked
for some slabs. The contracter was only too happy to give
me 6 slabs about 6'x6'. This stuff was about 8"thick and a major pain to break-up with a 16# sledge hammer, but in due
time I broke it up and built a raised bed along my drive
(24'x 8'x 30 inches) It turned out a bit bigger than I had
imagined but holds about 12 cubic yards of topsoil and about 2000 daffodil bulbs. Now I'm planning to fill it up
with other yellow plants. I'm hopping trailing plants from
the top and edging plants will help disguise the concrete
until it gets some aging. All I know is that it was a lot cheaper than the building blocks/stone I could buy.

diggerb

For what it's worth, here is a project I did that used an old sidewalk at my house. I died the concrete with iron sulphate.

Here's a picture of the completed patio.

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As dedicated 'recyclers', we rebuilt a walkway and a landing by our front steps with concrete pavers that were there (and that I hated). We broke up the pavers and relaid them similar to how you would lay flagstones. We love the look and have been complimented on the finished job. There was gravel in place already, so we just had to rework and widen the area. Because the pavers had an unattractive scored finish on the topside, we turned them over and what a difference that made. Used gold pebbles between the stones to finish it all off.
Really like the idea (and cost!!!) of recycling.
Gardening in the North.

Awesome concrete patio! It looks great!!

Here is a link that might be useful: In the Garden