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Residential Portfolio
Four Oaks
This client bought an acre of land in the exclusive Four Oaks Estate, and then had the home of his dreams built to his own specifications, complete with casino, underground pool, sauna, gymnasium etc.
Our client came to us after being quoted £170,000 by a landscaping company to give him the garden of his dreams. 170k!! We saw the plans and estimated the work to be in the region of £65,000. It was impossible to say where the other £105,000 was going to be spent.
It was for this reason why we were commissioned to re-design a whole new garden, making sure to incorporate items our client desired, such as a summer house, a log cabin, a corner patio, evergreen screening, water features, a large, stone driveway fountain, a sunken hot tub and accompanying decking etc. We called on specialists to install the hot tub & synthethic decking.
 
 
20 5m leylandii conifers were used to screen this side of the garden from our client's neighbours, which not only had an immediate effect but were also well-placed in this area consisting of several mature pines and leylandiis.
 
Planting the 5m tall evergreen Magnolia grandiflora trees
A 4m by 4m concrete base - whose foundations can be seen in the 'before' image - was prepared prior to the construction of a log cabin discretely located in this woodland area of the garden. Upon completion, the cabin doubled as a tool storage area.
 
The corner patio area with a small, octagonal summer house was surrounded on the lawn side by box hedging and tall evergreen trees with an undercanopy of mixed Phormiums. We just need everything to develop for a couple of years now.
Middleton Lane
This client had recently bought a semi-derelict farmhouse and outbuildings, and came to us to design and project manage the overall restructuring and planting of the various gardens (or soon-to-be gardens).
After consultations to decide upon client preference, tastes, likes and dislikes, designs were created, and each garden was prepared and planted separately. Each garden was designed with different purposes and functions in mind. Whereas the courtyard was designed to consist of Mediterranean type plants due to its very sheltered position in full sun, the more exposed rear garden was planted with many indigenous (i.e. fully hardy) trees and shrubs to complement the age and style of the farmhouse. An orchard was planted to one side of this garden, whilst a perennial 'cottage garden' bed was created at the rear garden's opposite side to provide an abundance of summer flowers next to the garden's path to compensate for the lack of abundant flowering that low maintenance, dwarf, evergreen shrubs tend to signify. A herb bed was planted next to the kitchen and patio area for three reasons: to take advantage of the south facing position, to provide easy access from the kitchen to the bed for culinary purposes, and to surround the patio area with many aromas.
 
Mr David Lamb of Silvasteel was contracted to carry out much of the mechanical earth moving and resurfacing/restructuring prior to the planting. After planting, a routine maintenance was set up to ensure that the planted areas continued to look their best and be in full health.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Due to the size of this property, its gardens are not just evolving over time, but are being extended and expanded, with peripheral grassed areas being incorporated into various gardens, and other courtyard/stable areas being restored and planted with time. This restoration programme has been going on for a few years, and will continue to do in the foreseeable future. The maintenance aspect alone, although seasonally dependent, can take up to 15 to 20 hours per week.
Monmouth Drive
This client's house had been on the market for quite a while, and feedback from her estate agent from potential buyers concerned the unattractive gardens. To rectify this - with a limited budget - our client sanctioned a makeover.
Front Garden
The top tier bed contained sparse shrubs interspersed by moss-covered soil. Our client opted to remove everything and turf it. ideally, we would have liked to have added architectural plants to add an eye-catching feature but the budget wouldn't allow this.
 
Rear Garden
The rear garden needed a lot more work to make it attractive to potential buyers. All of the beds were improved dramatically, the lawn was treated, the patio was jet-washed - followed by cement and kiln dried sand being brushed into the cracks - and stepping stones were cut into the lawn, which led up to a circle containing slate chippings, to create a central sitting area in the middle of the lawn. All of the impoverished alpines, perennials, shrubs and trees were fed with fish blood and bone meal, and the lawn was given a well-needed feed. Finally, a path at the bottom of the garden beside a cherry tree was membraned and covered with the same stepping stones and slate chippings to stop it becoming overgrown again from the rockery beds on each side.
 
 
This mounded rockery area was infested with weeds. With no money in the budget to buy alpines, we simply tidied it up and awaited the unfurling of the fern fronds in May, which combined with the forget-me-nots to produce a lovely effect.
 
We are delighted to announce that our client sold her home within weeks of completion of her garden restoration. Job done!
 
Edge Hill Road
This client was in the process of extending his home with a large, two-storey extension. Being situated on the corner of Edge Hill Road and a side-road, he was able to extend as much as he did. The rear of the garden was also dramatically restructured due to the building work ruining what was already there.
 
A wall was constructed around the perimeter of the garden from the main driveway and around the corner. This means that the very open front garden, which is essentially just a patch of lawn (seen above), could become an actual garden by positioning shrubs and perennials around the inside perimeter of the wall.
 
Below are more images of the front and side garden. The honeysuckles and clematises have yet to cover the arbour.
 
 
 
Rosemary Hill Road
Conifers
Because of an extra storey added to a neighbouring bungalow on the other side of our clients' fence, they now have windows directly facing their home where they have never had any in forty years. They understandably called upon us to locate and plant twenty six very large leylandii (we did suggest smaller conifers to reduce their spending but they are both in their eighties and decided upon an immediate resolution to their dilemma).
 
 
To gain the advantage of extra height, the conifers were not planted into the ground as such. They were placed in a row and staked into the ground. Three tons of topsoil was then barrowed into place around them to form a mound around the roots. Log roll retainers were used to prevent the mound from leaching when the conifers were being watered, as wet soil tends to do. This worked perfectly and gave our clients an instant five metre tall evergreen hedge.
Curve bed
This bed is heavily shaded for most of the day, except in winter, when the Beech trees leaves have shed. It was a rose bed in the past but had had never grown well in the shade.
 
Two years on
It was our job to firstly prepare the bed by removing all the dead and dying roses, digging the soil over, and adding a lot of compost and granular feed due how exhausted of nutrients the soil actually was. After selecting and planting suitable shrubs and ferns, the bed was top dressed with bark chippings to minimise the reappearance of weeds due to the fact that newly turned over soil exposes dormant seeds to light and moisture conditions; allowing them to germinate.
Island
Our client informed us that she had always wanted an island bed on the lawn in front of the beech hedge to break up its bleakness, especially during winter. We were asked to incorporate a Eucalyptus tree into this new bed. Without fully understanding which shape she wanted her new bed to be, we worked together, trying out a variety of potential sizes and shapes on the lawn with a hose pipe. It is funny to look back on but immensely practical for someone who doesn't really know which size and shape will work best. She eventually decided upon the shape of a figure of eight.
 
Two years on
The turf was removed there and then and the soil dug over and improved. It was during the turf removal that we discovered hundreds of chafer grubs, and, realising an infestation was pending, treated the lawn. Because of the notoriously difficult nature of eradicating chafer grubs, this process is on-going.
Rockery
This was another old rose bed. All that remained of the roses was three or four dozen dead rose stumps sticking out of the ground. It was only when the bed was cleared of all plants and weeds, and after the barrowing of three tons of topsoil and boulders onto the beds that we realised we had forgotten to take a 'before' photo. This is a shame because the bed was a total mess beforehand.
 
One year on
Three years on
The design laid out a newly raised bed into three tiers, with each tier being separated not only by a series of rock abutments but also by the types and sizes of plants contained within each. The lowest tier contains low growing conifers and junipers so as not to shield any of the views of the higher tiers' plants. The next tier contains larger, more showy Phormiums, Buddlejas and mixed grasses, whilst the rear tier contains Bamboos to mask off the Rhododendron hedge behind, which now looks out of place.
Rhododendron hedges
At the end of each June we trim our clients' Rhodedendron hedges that line their driveway. Because of the narrowness of it, any encroaching scrapes their car.
 
Elaeagnus ebbingii climber
This shrub - which can become a climber when attached to a wall, just like many Euonymuses - needs regular trims too.
 
Conifer removal
The central conifer of a threesome was blocking views of the pond, and our client decided that it had to go. The 'before' photo was taken just as cutting had commenced - we had forgotten to take a 'before' photo, but remembered just in time!
 
Blithbury Road
This garden was tackled in different stages. The photos below show a meandering path the we cut through our clients' lawn. It had to fit in with a Victorian house, so it was constructed with shingle with a reclaimed brick edging.
 
 
This part of this walled garden was incredibly overgrown, which all had to be ripped out and replanted with cottage garden perennials.
 
 
 
The wall that encloses this garden is 17th century, and the neighbour's ivy was eating into the ancient brickwork and prying out chunks of brick. Although the ivy couldn't be removed, because it was not on our client's land, any overhanging limbs could be severely trimmed to remove both the weight and the damaging effects.
Ivy climbs by pushing tendril-like shoots into any crevices it can find, thereby gaining purchase and attaching itself. However, with age these tendrils become thicker and thicker until the crevice is widened more and more until it gives way.
We stopped the rot as much as we could, and our client agreed to get us back to trim back new growth at least once per year to prevent any of this new growth from becoming thick with maturity.
Within three weeks of the 'after' image being taken, the ivy had re-foliated, which softened the effect of the trim.
 
Springfield Crescent
This was a simple garden restoration job with some transplanting, restyling and replanting.
 
 
 
Harris Close
 
One year on
The photo below shows how he shrubs look - two years on -without regular maintenance.
 
Two years on
Wiggington Road
this job was a complete restoration on all of this lovely cottage's surrounding gardens. the front of the cottage, as you can see in the 'before' and 'after' photos below, was condiderbaly overgrown and unkepmt. The narrow strip of lawn the ran up to the front door was in a bad state of repair and inappropriate for this position, as it was in shade all year 'round. Our remit here was to remove the lawn strip and replace with shingle, delineate the beds with edging boards, remove the climbers, attach fan trellises and start again with Wisterias on either side of the door - and then, with training, they will merge atop the door's triangular roof. there was also a restyling and replanting of the strip beds. The overall effect is striking.
 
 
This walled bed was so overgrown that the beautiful, 7ft, Victorian wall couldn't even be seen. there was nothing in the bed that could be salvaged - most of it was Cotoneaster - so we began again by planting 120 cottage garden perennials, with ground cover at thw front, middle tier in thwe centre and tall perennials at the back. The 'after' photo was taken immediately upon planting, and we will put an up-to-date photo here this summer. To avoid the bleakness of cottage garden beds, we interspersed many evergreens in the planting, many of which were evergreen and perennial, such as Heuchera.
 
The day of planting Two months on
 
Another part of the garden restoration concerned laying a patio in a corner of the garden that had been covered in shingle. The shingle was removed before laying large, millstone-type slabs in order to provide a new patio area that already has an aged feel to it so that it doesn't contrast against the age of the cottage.
 
This section of the rear garden was a complete restructuring. The paving slabs surrounded by shingle was replaced by a lawn, meaning that 8 tonnes of topsoil had to be wheel barrowed into place to raise the profile and add depth for the Grass Roots. The edging stones were removed and replaced by edging boards that were curved to creare meanders. The beds themselves were restructured and restyled.
 
Our client wanted the steps bricked up in order to separate the top tier of the garden from the botton. The 'after' photo was taken buring the bed transformations and edging with boards. The in-filling of the steps, the bricking up of the gap and the extension of the top tier patio worked perfectly.
 
The image - below right - was taken during the transformation and the soil profiling. We now wish we had the foresight to take an 'after' image. Oh well!
 
Hill Rise
This client wanted a restyling. The garden needed consisted of a lower tier with a patch of lawn that was in bad shape, and an upper tier with another area of lawn, which was equally in a bad condition. The garden is surrounded on all sides by tall leylandii, and had no other plants. Our client wanted the garden softerned with surrounding, evergreen, low maintenance shrubs, and the lower tier lawn removed, and a circular patio added to house her exterior table & chairs.
 
 
 
Hunts Green
We have also included simple hedge-cutting jobs into our profile to show potential clients that no job is too small. This is a green leylandii conifer hedge which was beginning to push over a wooden fence constructed in front of it. The fence can only be seen after the hedge-cutting. It is worth noting that the angle the 'after' photo was taken at makes the hedge top look uneven. This is an optical illusion.
 
Hill Lane
This client's raised bed had been subsiding for many years - because of the lack of support - until he realised that enough was enough. Our remit was to instal railway sleepers and sculpt the bed's profile to create long-term stability. The yew - Taxus bacata - tree's roots you can see exposed remained untouched. The client wanted to plant the bed himself, and we gave him plenty of advice of which plants would be perfectly suited.
 
 
Rosemary Hill Road
Sutton Coldfield is a major hot spot infestastion area of chafer grubs - nobody knows why. They hatch from eggs under the lawn and spend months eating their way through the succulent grass roots (no pun intended). When the lawn's root system has been eaten away, it is easy for grows and magpies to scratch and claw the unsupported lawn away. This is what happend to our clients' lawn when they were on holiday. Undisturbed for a week, the birds wreaked havoc. The figure on the left of the 'before' photo is a scarecrow - complete with curtain-pole gun and cuddly toy dog - to keep away crows until we could have the finest quality turf delivered.
We returfed and then bought nematode worms - expensive but necessary -which we watered into the lawn to kill the chafer grubs. Job done!
 
Another job for this client was a simple laurel hedge-planting to screen the view of the tangled woodland behind their house.
 
Station Road
Our remit here was to clear everything out of this garden except the Japanese Acer. It was a garden clearance job in its most simple form. The 'before' and 'after' photos were taken on the same day - but 8 hours apart.
 
 
Field Lane
This vegetable patch had become overgrown and weed-infested. Our remit was to clear out all of the weeds - leaving the few-remaining vegetables - and trim up the Laurel hedge at the back and Privet hedge at the front.
 
Petard Close
This client's restyling was in two stages, the first of which can be seen below. The The three trees that were cramping the central cherry tree had to be felled.
 
The next stage involved opening up the garden by removing the iron railings atop the retaining wall, and creating & planting a rockery because of the difficulty our client had in mowing to the edges of the lawn.
Railway sleepers were used to terrace the garden to separate the lawn and rockery areas from the area beneath and around the remaining cherry tree, which has sparse grass and no shrubs. We then planted this area with assorted ground cover evergreens surrounding a railway sleeper pathway for access to the shed. a dark bark mulch added to the woodland effect.
 
These beds need at least two years to really fulfil their potential, and we will add more photos as soon as we can.
 
Wishaw Lane
This client wanted a rockery at the end of her bed, which we cleared of plants and prepared the soil. Two tonnes of boulders were positioned to add create the rockery's landscape. Then a geotextile was laid beneath a light coloured shingle to match the limestone boulders, which looks a lot lighter in the third poto than it actually is.
Before
 
The next stage was to plant mixed alpines and dwarf grasses, conifers and junipers. This rockery needs at least two growing seasons to develop, and we will update our photos this summer.
 
Church Lane
This is another very simple job; to plant leylandii conifers in order to continue a pre-existing leylandii hedge. This client was prepared to wait for 6ft leylandiis to
 
 
 
Hill Road
It's nice for us to be able to show smaller schemes of work; but work that is nonetheless rewarding - to us and our clients! This job was a simple restoration of a rockery in order to get it back to a 'blank canvas' so our client could replant it will alpines.
You will also notice on the top left of the images the before and after work of a decking area. This is our client's own work. He only needed us to do the back-breaking work of removing the ivy and spraying whatever roots remained. To show a photo of the area after our client planted alpines and bark mulched the area would be misleading with regards to the work we carried out.
 
Boldmere Road
 
Fence, trellis and pergola painting, after tidying the beds.
 
 
Station Road
 
 
 
This client's garden came to a sharp, narrow point because of how the former land was carved up prior to building the estate she lives on. The resulting narrow apex was unfortunbate, and gave a claustophobic feeling. We overcame this by installing mirrored panels on the opposing fences at the apex, giving the optical illusion of a much more broad space. The results were incredible. You can see from the photo above-left that our client has tried to mask this useless corner off with trellising, but this simply shortened her already tiny garden further still. We planted a bamboo at the apex - the meeting point between the left side fence and the right - and the single specimen looked like a whole bamboo hedge from many angles. We finished off the effect with a natural-looking rockery with alpines. Artificial ivies were used initially to mask the mirrors' edges until the climbers we planted could take effect.
Olton Lane
This client wanted his entire rear garden reworked, restyled and replanted, with a low-maintenance theme due to his marriage ending and his dislike or gardening.
The photos no not do justice to how overgrown this long garden was, as it hadn't been touched - other than mowing - for many years.
this woodland bed - below - consisted predominantly of laurels and geraniums. It was our clients wished to remove the laurels - which we reluctantly agreed to do - and create a woodland rockery. The 'after' photo was taken on the day of planting, so it's not possible to see what the rockery would mature into. Our client has since sold this house, but if we ever get the chance to take an up-to-date photo, we certainly will.
 
An expanded view
St. Margarets
This client is the housebound mother of another client of ours, whose husband had recently died. She decided that the 4 bedroom house was too large for her on her own, so wanted her front and rear gardens tidied up for more 'kerb appeal' for potential buyers - whilst keeping the cost to a minimum. We do this a lot, and knew exactly what to do for her small budget.
The front and rear lawns were mown, edged and then treated with a feed, weed & mosskiller to breathe new life into them. The photos below show the front lawn. We fed and gave the shrubs a little shaping too, and planted pansies in her pots.
 
There was so much more we would have liked to do for dramatic impact - such as infilling the gaps with more shrubs - but we made enough of a difference on a tight budget, and our client sold her home very soon afterwards. Job done!
 
 
Little Aston Lane
This was a very simple job but one that makes a dramatic impact. This client's fence was being pulled down by the ivies, brambles and mile-a-minute climbers that had made their way up and over her neighbours' shed, and she wanted to replace the fencing but was unable to do so because of the heavy entanglement. We removed everything and gthen she replaced the fance...but not before we took the 'after' photo :)
 
Hill Lane
This client wanted his overgrown rockery bed emptied in order to be re-planted with more appropriate plants, which we thus designed, sourced and planted.
 
Borrowcap Lane
These images were taken using a mobile phone, so the quality is somewhat lacking.
Our client's home is surrounded at very close quarters by very tall trees, one of which had died several years ago, and it wasn't a problem until strong winds were beginning to break the tree apart piece by piece, and the broken sections were smashing roof tiles as they landed on his home. It had to go! It doesn't look much in the 'before' image, but the total weight of the dead tree was in excess of three tonnes.
To gauge the height of the tree, our client's roof can be seen protruding into the left of each image.
 
Middleton Lane
This client had his farmhouse on the market, and wanted the driveway to look nice.He had new stable doors fitted and painted, and then it was up to us to source heavy, stone pots (to avoid the plants being top-heavy and falling over in high winds) and shrubs/dwarf trees.
A major condideration to be countered were the wall lights fitted to every other wall section between the stable doors. The lights could not be covered by plants. We asked our client whether he wanted all of the plants to be small, or alternatively smaller and larger, and he agreed on the latter. We then balanced the small, compact Euonymous shrubs with smaller, tapering pots.
 
Another aspect of the front of the house tidy-up concerned replacing a unobstrusive rose bed with mixed evergreen shrubs.
 
Blithbury Road
This client bought recently bought this house, and saw what we had done to his neighbour's garden; the rear hedge of this client's garden is shared by our other clients in this courtyard - scroll up quite a bit to see the other Blithbury Road images.
We are still kicking ourselves with this one, but - for some reason - the 'before' images were not taken. This means that the dramatic changes can only be imagined. The garden was essentially a patch lawn surrounded by even patchier, scraggly beds. We treated the lawn, created meandering, curving beds, which we planted with cottage garden perennials, and then cut out a Paisley/teardrop bed beside their path, which we surrounded with box hedging and infilled with English & French Lavender and Rosemary, and then placed a conical Lauris nobilis (Bay tree) off-centre. This Victorian-style planting really emphasised the age of the building. We also placed log cross-section effect stepping stones leading into the lawn to draw.
The overall effect was stunning!
 
 
Jockey Road
This garden was bordered by low walls on each side with adjacent concrete paths.
 
The sudden gradient towards the rear of the garden created a slope that made mowing difficult.
With the client undecided on how to change the garden for the better, and looking for inspiration, we decided upon removing the low walls on each side of the garden (which had fallen over in places and were leaning severly in others) and then cut into the slope in order to create a two-tiered garden. Railway sleepers were used effectively.
 
After these shots were taken we turfed the top tier either side and behind the steps, leaving a foot-wide bed at the front to plant trailers to soften the hard surface of the reclaimed sleepers.
The side beds were then planted with mixed shrubs and perennials. The photo below was taken a month after completion, just after our client had cut the new grass too short.
Wishaw Lane
This client asked us to source a rare yellow-flowering cherry tree. We sourced this rare Prunus 'Yukon' from Italy. Russel - in the blue - is 6'7", which gives you an idea of the tree's size. And 6 men can stand in the tree's empty pot. We enjoyed not only the challenges of finding and having delivered such an exquisite cherry tree with pale yellow blossom, but also the challenge of planting it without any sign of our presence - other than the tree itself - after we had cleared up. Easier said than done when considering a 1.5 tonne tree and a soft lawn. We will return in late April to include an image of the blossom.
 
Hartopp Road
 
Orchard Way
This client's garden's beds had been allowed to become overgrown and weed-infested. You can see in the photo below-left that the bird bath has become swamped by self-seeded weeds and grasses. Compare this to below-right.
 
We tackled this garden by first getting into the beds and carefully forking out the various weeds, ensuring that we took all of the weeds' roots to prevent a further outbreak. We then pruned the shrubs, fed the soil, applied a weed, feed & mosskiller to the lawn, and finished off with a top-dressing of bark chippings. We waited several weeks (because forking over soil often releases dormant weed seeds) and then sprayed any weeds that had managed to find their way through the chippings. This garden now requires minimal maintenance twice yearly.
 
 
Below is how the garden looked prior to our involvement. It is deceptive that the garden looks so healthy, but only upon closer inspection does the seriousness of the weed infestations become apparent.
The photos below show how the beds look once the weeds have been removed; the beds are so airy now, rather than an amorphous mass.
 
Entry Hill
This client wanted her tired-looking garden to be rejuvinated with the strict proviso that the garden would become very low maintenance. She wanted to keep her Acer in the middle of the garden, and wanted to make a feature of it; she wanted the moss-ridden lawn to go, and wanted her beds and rockery restored.
 
 
 
 
 
This garden is going to show dramatic changes with a couple of seasons' growth behind it. Updated photos to follow soon.
Peasdown St John
This client acquired a garden filled will all sorts of junk after buying her home, and it was our job to remove the suspicious looking piles and humps and hillocks and mounds, which amounted to 2 builders' skips worth of assorted rubble. Everything that could be barrowed, carried or man-handled was removed from the garden, leaving an empty shell. We then levelled the land and extensively worked over the soil because of the vegetables that were soon to be grown. The bottom half of the garden was seeded for lawn, whilst the top half has vegetables on the right hand side and a chicken run on the left. Updated photos of how it looks now to follow soon.
 
 
The unearthing of ton after ton of rubble
 
Poulton Avenue
This client moved into a house with a rear lawn in an awful condition, not to mention the central scoch marks from bonfires. We quickly realised that the condition of the underlying soil was equally awful. As is often the case on new estates, the gardens that are created after the extensive building work ends hides a multitude of sins. The two rear gardens of houses that back on to each other were once a building site, and the heavy machinary often compacts the clay soil into something that hardly supports grass - the hardiest of plants - let alone shrubs.
This garden's rear is south-facing, meaning that the rear fence is north-facing, and the shadow you can see remains all year long; only becoming shallower during high summer.
Because of this, we had to remove the lawn prior to extensively digging over the soil to a fork's depth, adding organic matter as we went. Because the weather but a dampener - so to speak - on our efforts, we left the aerated sod for a couple of weeks to dry out before tackling the next stage: raking & breaking. The soil had to be worked and reworked over and over until it had a crumb structure that we were looking for.
As our client requested grass seed over turf, we kept on spreading seeds whilst working so that a lot of the seed would be slightly buried. The birds were not happy about this.
There will soon be beds surrounding the lawn, and the lumps of sod were not broken up as much around the perimeter. Nothing will happen in these areas until the lawn can be walked upon.
 
This is the end result before the seeds germinate to produce a lawn. As this was an extremely recent undertaking, the lawn has yet to grow. Watch this space.
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