Garden Design Project – Part 3

The next stage of my garden renovation process was all about the hard landscaping materials. The term itself isn’t something that I find appealing. I’m all about colour, texture & nature so I knew the right products were instrumental to help me achieve a contemporary style teamed with cottage inspired details bursting with colour & breathtaking natural free-flowing borders.

As discussed in part 2, I initially chatted to the garden designer about the overall theme & tone I was after. I was grateful to be guided with the choices available for patios & paths, which are not something I have much knowledge on. Alongside the incredibly detailed design & to scale drawing, they also provided a list of suggested materials & the purchasing information to make it all really easy for me.

I kept the recommendations for the Bradstone products such as the Ancestry walling & natural sandstone, but in the end we switched the patio finish for sandstone that had a fine textured grain also as opposed to a fully smooth finish. We did research patio styles a fair bit & visited various display centres to make sure we were 100% happy, as it’s something that we were investing in & had to look good in the long term & perform exceptionally over the years. Another reason why we favoured Bradstone is that we knew that they were sustainable products, & have been responsibly & ethically sourced.

We also used the Ancestry walling in ‘Abbey Brown’ as per the landscaper’s suggestion I thought it was a fab product to tie in my love of walled gardens whilst being sympathetic to the conservation area that we live in. As we wanted to retain the old original sandstone steps the new bricks fitted in perfectly continuing with the warm tones, with enough of that modern day contrast we wanted.

Our garden is 90% Bradstone as they provided a 10 year product warranty & a 5 year workmanship warranty & that was one thing that we felt assured by when investing so much of our time, resources & finances into such a big garden renovation project.

We actually had to ordered quite a large volume of materials here are the approximates: 66 square metres for the paving that wrapped around the house, 9 square metres for the circular patio, 9 linear metres for the curved sandstone wall (this also had a breeze block skin layer that sits directly behind), 30 linear metres for the brick edging & 12 square metres of concrete utility flags to sit under the cabin.

An alternative material was suggested for the clay brick path & this was mainly due to the much-needed texture that was crucial to soften the design & bring in old & new styles in a seamless way. The product was by Global Stone & in the end we opted for the ‘Tudor’ colour to tie in with an old brick wall that we wanted to retain.

If you missed the first & second instalments of my garden series you can access both articles here. You can also check #rachaeltaylorgarden & #rachaeltaylorhome.

Links:

Bradstone – walls & patio

Global Stone – curved path

Next post…

Stay tuned for the next instalment, which will showcase the bulk of the excavation process. It included a LOT of skips & various car parts that were buried under the old mound… Yes it’s true! Apparently the house was built on an old car garage site & the neighbours had encountered similar problems when excavating their own gardens.