Garden landscaping near me: design and build

Garden landscaping that starts with the structure

If you are searching for garden landscaping near you, it helps to split the job in two. Soft landscaping is planting, turf and borders. Hard landscaping is everything built: patios, paths, steps, retaining walls, raised beds, edging, driveways and drainage. We are builders and bricklayers, so the hard landscaping is our side of the job, and it is the part that decides how the garden works for decades.

Our original site lists "all related hard landscapes" alongside extensions and conversions, and that is how we approach a garden: as a small building project with foundations, levels and water to manage, not as decoration added at the end.

Design, or build to someone else's plan

Some customers arrive with a drawing from a garden designer. Others have a rough idea and a list of things they want: a patio by the back door, a flat lawn, steps down to a lower level, somewhere to sit in the evening sun. Either works. Where there is a plan, we build to it and raise anything that will not drain or stand up before work starts. Where there is not, we walk the garden with you, mark out the main areas and agree a layout that fits the levels you actually have.

Good layouts follow a few simple rules. Keep the main seating area close to the house and on the same level as the door if possible. Put steps where people already walk. Give every hard surface somewhere for water to go. Leave room for planting so the garden does not become one big slab.

Levels, steps and raised beds

Sloping gardens are where hard landscaping earns its keep. Cutting the slope into two or three flat terraces, held by brick or block retaining walls, turns a garden you look at into one you can use. Steps between the levels need even risers and a comfortable going, and they need to be lit or clearly edged if you use the garden after dark. Raised brick beds make planting easier to reach and can double as seating at the edge of a patio.

One of our case studies is a two-tiered garden overhaul with new steps, walls and paving linking the upper and lower levels to a converted part-garage home office. It shows how a garden, a building and the routes between them can be planned together.

Drainage and ground preparation

Most failed gardens fail underground. Patios laid on thin bedding sink, walls without foundations lean, and hard surfaces that fall towards the house push water at the damp-proof course. We dig out to a proper depth, lay and compact a sub-base, set falls away from the building and add channel drains, soakaways or permeable surfaces where the ground needs them.