Initially, a few months ago we did some garden maintenance here, to make a start on this design. This is a large garden, which is raised at the far end above the street, with views of lovely Georgian houses beyond.
We started off by working through the borders, removing quite a lot of vegetation, as we’ll be enlarging and shaping them soon. We dug and potted up particular plants of interest that we will use within the planting at the end of this job. We cut back few large shrubs in preparation, prior to moving them to a new location in the garden when it warms up.
The self seeded sedges were removed, including the concrete pathway, which will be turfed over. At the far end of the garden, Will removed the membrane and bagged up the mulch which we will recycle and use once we’ve planted. We like to re-use materials where possible.
He then smashed the top off the low concrete railing off with a sledge hammer, and we dug down to investigate how deep the concrete went. It turned out that it went rather deep, so we decided that it will be faced with ?????? rather than removing the entire thing.
The stone border around the bay tree was removed, with the bay tree itself going soon too – along with a very large Leylandii that is close to the house.
A lot of self seeded euphorbia, and ivy were removed from the borders. We saved a huge amount of Primroses, to replant.
We created a large pile of rubble, soil, stone and the broken up concrete pathway. This will be collected by a grab crane at the end of this week, which will scoop it up easily and efficiently.
A pneumatic breaker was used to continue breaking up concrete and brick walls and edging that we found as we dug down to create new levels in the garden.
The paving in situ were huge slabs. It would have been nice to have kept them the same size, but they were too heavy to move and there was not access to bring in machinery to help us do so. Therefore, Jerry cut them down slightly and we stacked them up, ready to be used as the patio near the top of the house.
Although it was super cold, we had some beautiful mornings with the sun coming up through the trees.
Sam chipped mortar off the edges of the paving slabs that we wanted to keep. Good condition Victorian charcoal edging was stacked up to be sold on or possibly used in a future project.
Once most of the paving and concrete had been removed we started digging down the soil which had been under the patio. This is being taken down to the level of the lawn, and will have a new patio installed there.
We enjoyed working together, with some good chat, whilst we excavated this area, increasing the pile for the grab.
A new fence and screening will be installed around the grey corrugated roof on the left hand side. This is for security and privacy purposes. This garden is in the heart of the city, and the owner has had trouble with people climbing up into the garden in the past.
We’ve got a lot to do on this garden design, but we’ve made a great start this week. Check back in with us soon to see how this one is developing…
