So we arrived to a very overgrown, and neglected rear garden. It seamed mostly untouched, with the boundary trees needing a good cutback. The lawn (if you can call it that, was long and mostly weed. Against the house was a very old, broken up concrete pad, which joined up to an old tiled pathway down the side of the property, that led how the front driveway. Although the boundary walls looked in a bit of a state, a close inspection showed that they were structurally sound. The idea was to make the biggest impact, with the least amount spent, as this property was a bit of a renovation project, and an investment for the clients.
First job was to cut back the boundary trees, and clear all the unwanted shrubs from underneath. In doing this we uncovered some old walling stone that we would use for edging the beds later. Once this was done, we stripped all of the lawn area, and sniped all other rubble we found from around the site. That was then all of the waste taken out, and put into the skip.
On the old concrete pad we laid a natural stone patio, directly onto the concrete as this was a suitable hard sub-base. When ever you lay paving against a house like this, remember to slope the paving away from the house so all the rainwater runs away from the building, and doesn’t cause any damage or rising damp to the brickwork.
we also paved around the corner to the front of the building, and managed to get all of the paving to meet the desired heights, so there was no need for any steps.
Next up was the lawn and bed prep. To get a level to the lawn we wanted, we had to make it fractionally lower than the side beds. This is where we used the walling stone from earlier, to edge and retain the beds. We did have to import a small amount of fresh soil to give the lawn something decent and nutritious to root into. Once we had laid and pointed the paving, we brought the new soil in, peeped the lawn, and the laid the new turf.
That was pretty much it. A quick, low budget tidy up, that helped with the saleability of the property, and probably added quite a bit of value, much more than was spent. Not really something we do often, but was all easy enough, and could be carried out easily enough if you don’t mind a bit of graft, and are relatively practical.
As always, any questions, feel free to throw them my way. I’ll do all I can to help, on anything from this post, or anything else you may need to know.
Thanks for the interest.
Getting nostalgic looking at those photos! Love a good garden clean up, especially around older houses with all those little treasure trove to be unearthed. There's even something about that alleyway between the two buildings that's appealing. I think it's bringing back memories.
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