This landscape garden was a little bit different. The customer, Chris, wanted to re-design and implement a new patio area at the rear of his house but wanted it to be a surprise for his wife's birthday. This meant building the patio, retaining walls, raised beds and steps whilst his wife was away on business.

This gave me just over a week to start and complete the entire job! It also meant starting and finishing on very specific dates and working to a tight schedule.

Chris said his wife had always longed for something a little bit different in her garden, she had a love of butterflies and dragonflies. She has always wanted a circular patio feature that would stand out from the garden.

We chose Ral Green Sandstone paving for the patio area, this has nicely understated green, grey and taupe brown colours in it. We also suggested a dragonfly patio centre piece as the patio's focal feature and it is a circular patio. We felt sure that Chris's wife would love this. Chris agreed. A large, colourful, graceful dragonfly in the middle of the patio would be ideal for his wife, so that's what we did!

On either side of the patio we put in two sweeping, raised flower beds with retaining walls and between them I constructed a step to give access to the newly  turfed area which was on a higher level. The steps were topped off with Raj Green sandstone paving.

We managed to get the landscaping job completed before Chris's wife, Jane returned home from her business trip, much to her surprise and delight!

Testimonial

"Hi Andy. I just wanted to let you know how incredibly happy and grateful both me and Jane are for the amazing job you did of transforming our garden. The patio is brilliant. Jane loves the dragonfly feature. It looks incredible! Jane nearly fainted when I showed her it. This is one surprise she will never forget, that's all down to you. Thank you so very much."

Chris and Jane Bullock

Yarm, Stockton on Tees, Cleveland,Teesside.

This is the second landscaping project we've completed for Bob and Carol. We did some landscaping work for them the previous year. It was lovely to be asked to return.

Bob and Carol were very keen for us to carry out their new landscaping project. They wanted a paved area around Bob's shed. We constructed this paved area using a buff coloured, vibrant yellow Yorkstone paving - this matched the existing patio area which we'd constructed last year. We also replaced a retaining wall.

The new retaining wall was built from, split faced buff coloured walling and Saxon buff coloured coping stones. These matched an existing wall we had built at the property last year.

This landscaping project was relatively straight forward. Once all the paving and the wall were in place all that remained for us to do was grout the paving in and then seal the paving.

We use a  water resistant, resin based sealer. We always advise that new paving or patios are sealed. This will help retain the colour of the new patio stones and protects the paving stone from weather damage.

Testimonial

" Hi Andy, Great to see you all again. Thank you for the work you carried out on our house. The wall looks great and the new paved area around the shed fits in perfectly with the patio area you did for us last year. we're both chuffed to bits!  Cheers."

Bob and Carol Armstrong

The Glebe, Norton, Stockton on Tees, Teesside.

This was a great landscaping project for us to carry out, we were really pleased with the end result. It's stunning. We were pretty much given free reign by Derek. He had looked through our porfolio during our consultation. He was happy to trust our design skills.

Derek asked me to help him choose the paving, brick and edging stones. We were happy to do this. We sat and colour matched stones with various samples until we both agreed on the sunrise sandstone paving, southern gold gravel, oatmeal brick work and cobbled edging. All excellent choices which blend perfectly with Derek's current colour scheme of his house brick work.

During consultations, Derek had specifically requested a patio area which he could retreat to. An area where he could read his papers and drink coffee on the summer mornings in peace. With this in mind we designed his patio to sit at the top of his garden. This area is secluded and very quiet.

The main patio (the retreat) and the steps leading up to this are built from the most beautiful sunrise, sand stone patio stones. This particular sandstone is absolutely amazing to look at. It's gorgeous. Extremely vibrant colours bounce out at you. The colours run through the sandstone like a rainbow. This patio stone is one of our favorites, it's a product which looks great dry and fabulous wet. It's very eye catching.

We constructed the steps which descend from the patio also from sunrise sandstone. We used the oatmeal bricks as a border to the steps. The oatmeal colour compliments and enhances the sunrise sandstone.

We designed and constructed the steps from the patio to become narrower as you walk down the patio. This gives a flowing movement to the patio and when walking up to the patio it is very inviting when the area under foot increases.

We also built a path of sunrise sandstone along the side of Derek's house. This pathway leads to another circular patio. This circular patio is outside Derek's French windows. This patio area will be used by the whole family in the Summer, They will eat breakfast together here.

As you can see, we have cut the sandstone of the path way leading to the circular patio in different sizes. We did this to add some variation to the style and design of the path. A pathway in my opinion looks more interesting when things are cut differently. Anyone can have a bog standard paved path.

We opted for Southern gold gravel at the side of the house, this compliments the sunrise sandstone path and patio. Gravel also acts as drainage.

A retaining garden wall was built all around the back of this property too. We built this from the oatmeal bricks. The lawned area of this garden was very steep and sloped. We had to build a retaining wall to hold all the earth and lawned area in.We thoroughly enjoyed this job it was great to see the changes taking place and the end result looks fantastic!

Testimonial

" Hi Andy, Many thanks for all the hard work and effort you put into my beautiful secluded retreat, it's just how I imagined it to be. I love sitting out here on a morning or evening reading my books and drinking my coffee or wine. Everybody has complimented the work and said what a huge improvement it is to the garden. Thank you for listening to me and spending the time helping me choose the right stones. I'd have been lost without you. I've never spent so much time outdoors! "

Derek Mallam

Hammond Close, Marton, Middlesbrough, Cleveland, Teesside.

Steph and Anth were really excited about having their garden landscaped. They both had some great ideas. It was fun to work with them. They wanted us to create a landscape with a difference, something interesting to look at, different from the usual patios or lawns you might see in peoples' gardens. After many chats we decided to lay their patio using sawn purest one sandstone. This is extremely beautiful natural sandstone, it has lustres of pink, peach, cream, browns and light yellow tones running through it, each stone is different to the last. This patio stone has a very romantic look to it; it's soft on the eye.

Steph and Anth asked us to create a romantic garden patio for them. They wanted somewhere to dine together on the summer evenings. They also wanted to access their patio area through a wooden rose covered archway. They even requested a heart shaped retaining wall.

We decided while designing their garden wall to echo the wall shape with the newly turfed lawn, hence the heart shaped lawn.

The retaining walls were constructed in a soft curved 'V' shape - like a love heart - how romantic and in keeping with what Steph and Anth wanted. This heart shaped raised bed has now become a colourful purple heather garden - it's stunning!

A rustic wooden archway was embedded at the edge of the patio. The patio is entered via the wooden archway. Steph is growing a beautiful deep pink climbing rose up and around the wooden archway frame. When the rose is fully established this will be an outstanding feature of their garden.

We added a twist to their patio with a cobbled antique cobble edge. This gives the patio a more graceful feel. We used the same cobbles around the edge of the turf, see how this defines the curvaceous shape of the lawn and ties in the heart theme for Steph and Anth.

We chose Southern gold gravel to lay around the patio to create texture, colour and a definitive heart shape. The gravel perfectly compliments the beautiful sandstone and the newly landscaped garden.

This was a fabulous landscaping project to carry out. Steph and Anth were really interesting, fun people to work with. We really enjoyed the design element of this landscaping project. I'm sure you'll agree it looks beautiful in reality too!

Testimonial

“To Andy, We would like to say thank you for the wonderful work you have accomplished in our garden.
Your ideas were inspiring and produced a garden we could only imagine.
We were always kept informed of every stage and asked approval of all ventures.
We can not wait till spring to enjoy our beautiful secret garden. It's beautiful!
Thank you from both of us "

Steph and Anth Wardell

Dunedin Avenue, Fairfield, Stockton on Tees, Cleveland, Teesside.