This landscaping project is a real favourite of ours.

We got a call from Alan and Jan asking us to give them some ideas about what they could do with their eye sore of a garden. It was a new build house in Norton, Stockton on Tees, Cleveland. Their existing rear garden which consisted of mainly mud and not much else.

They had a few paving stones along the back of the house, but wanted the whole area to be modern and useable, with turf, patios, raised beds for planting and some new close board fencing.

There's nothing like a blank canvas to fire up the imagination!

The landscape of the garden had a downward slope which made it ideal for a split level patio and because of the split level we were able to encorporate a long raised flower bed, at the end of which we put steps down to the lower level patio. Which would also be where the new turf would be laid for the lawn.

We carried out a brick match for the raised flower bed and then sat with Alan and Jan to make a choice for the paving stones. They went with Sunrise sandstone.

We then put in the wall foundations for the raised flower bed, then built the wall up to the height required and finished it off with a Sunrise sandstone coping stone. This now gave us our split level garden to design and landscape.

We then put a stretch of close board fencing along the left hand side of the property as a boundry partition.

The next step was to build up the bases for the lower patio and newly turfed lawn area and level them off, ready for paving stones and turf respectively. We then laid the lower patio and cut a long, sweeping arc out of the left hand side, almost in a horse shoe shape. This meant that the turf could be built in to the patio and give an oval shape to the lawn. We put a double cobbled edge around the turf just to give it a funky finish. We left a border at the other side of the turf and planted a Cox's Orange Pippin apple tree and a purple flowering lilac bush.

We then started on the top patio using the same Sunrise sandstone paving stones. This was a standard rectangular patio which was far more straight forward to lay than the lower patio. We decided to finished the patio edge against the wall off with a row of cobbles and a gravel strip using York Gold gravel.

The photos will give you a better idea of the work, so take a peek!

Testimonial

"The job looks fantastic Andy, we're really happy. It looks a world away from when you first started the job. We've passed your card on to a friend. Cheers to you and your lads for all your fantastic work!"

Alan Heatherington

Norton, Stockton on Tees, Cleveland, Teesside.