The rear garden was waterlogged and couldn’t be used for anything up to 6 months of the year. Built on a slope with predominately clay soil, the area was in need of land drains to help take the water out of the soil and make the garden usable again. Whilst we were doing this, we also extended the patio area and re-levelled the paths around the back of the property plus creating a hard-standing area at the back of the garage for the bins to be kept out of the way. An extra feature was the addition of steps to the side of the patio to the side of the house not previously accessible.
At the front of the property was an unusable grass slope which was extremely difficult to maintain. The existing steps up to the front door were dangerous and there was no path directly up to the house from the public footpath. Therefore, when 2 cars were on the driveway, visitors had to walk across the grass to get to the house and the home-owners were stepping out onto the grass as they alighted from their vehicle.
We reduced the width and height of the laurel hedge at the edge of the public footpath and dug out a metre of it at one end to allow for a path to be created alongside the driveway. We then dug out footings and put up a sleeper wall directly in front of the laurel hedge (house side) and along the side of the garden adjacent to the neighbouring property creating a wall allowing us to level up the garden. We made sure that the wall to the adjoining neighbours property was far enough away from their drive that they could still open their car doors. We created a path to the property, re-levelled the existing front path and mended the existing steps to both sides.
Having levelled the garden sufficiently to make it more usable, we also added a raised bed which would eventually be turned into a flower bed. The lower level being laid to grass seed. The lower level was then blended into the new path but at a slope much less than the original gradient.
Project Timescale: 3.5 weeks
Project Completed: May 2017