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.