Bespoke Garden Features

The features are the bit people actually use

Nobody stands in their garden admiring the drainage. They sit under the pergola, they walk up the steps, they put things in the raised beds.

Which is odd, because features are usually the first thing cut when a budget tightens, and the thing most often handed to whoever happens to be available. A pergola put up by someone who does not set posts properly starts leaning within a few winters. A raised bed built from untreated timber rots from the soil side out. Turf laid on ground that was never prepared looks perfect for one summer and patchy for every one after.

These are the parts of a garden you touch every day. They are worth building like the rest of it.

Six things, built to the same standard as what is under them

Examples of garden features

• Level changes and terracing.

  Turning ground you cannot use into ground you can. Cutting into a slope, holding it back, and setting the levels so the space actually works rather than just looking different.

• Pergolas and timber structures.

  Built on site rather than assembled from a kit, sized to the space and set on proper foundations.

• Raised beds and planters.

  In stone or timber, built to last rather than to a price.

• Lawns and turfing.

  New lawns laid on ground that has been levelled, drained and prepared properly first.

• Garden buildings.

  If you have chosen and bought a shed, greenhouse or garden structure, we will prepare the base and build it for you. We do not manufacture them.

• Steps, edging and finishing.

  The small pieces that decide whether a garden feels finished or nearly finished.

Choose an underlined feature to see an example.

TerracingRaised bedsSteps

A pergola is a building, not a decoration

It is worth understanding what a pergola actually does, because it explains why some stay up and some do not.

It is a large structure with a flat top, standing in the open. Wind does not go round it, it pushes against it, and everything that push generates ends up in the posts and in the ground around them. Set those posts shallow, or concrete them in so water collects at the base, and you have a structure that will move.

We set posts to depth, with drainage beneath so water can escape, and we size the timber to the span rather than to whatever is on the shelf.

A lawn is mostly what is underneath it

Turf is the easy part. It goes down in a day and looks immaculate immediately.

Whether it still looks like that in three years depends on what happened first. Whether the ground was levelled properly. Whether the drainage was sorted out or ignored. Whether there was enough decent topsoil, or whether turf went straight onto compacted clay because it was quicker.

Devon clay holds water. A lawn laid on it without preparation turns to moss and mud by the second winter, and no amount of feeding fixes it.

Where our trade stops

Some things in a garden are not our work, and we would rather say so.

Electrical work and garden lighting. We will trench, run ducting and coordinate the work, but a qualified electrician does the electrics and is on site to do them. We do not do that part ourselves and we would not want a customer of ours to have someone who does.

Water features. We will build the structure and prepare the ground, with the right trade working alongside us on the pumps, the plumbing and the electrics.

Planting. We are happy to do the planting. What we do not have is a horticulturist’s knowledge of what will thrive in your soil and aspect. Where a scheme calls for that, we will work to a planting plan from you or from a designer, and put it in properly.

None of that slows a project down. It just means the right person does each part.

No price list, and here is why

A pergola in an open lawn and a pergola on a slope with access down a side passage are different jobs. So are two identical lawns if one sits on free draining ground and the other on clay that needs digging out first.

So we come and look, at no charge and with no obligation. You get a written quote with the work set out and a price that does not move.