This is a circa 120 square metre front drive.
This is a large front drive to a house which has recently undergone a complete overhaul.The driveway needed to be improved to come up to the standard of the house. The drive had large reasonably unattractive Scottish pebbles.
There were very overgrown untidy flower beds with broken brick edges.
The fencing was also in a bad state
The front steps were badly laid and unattractive
This is how we proceeded: It was decided that the drive needed to be stripped and regravelled,the beds needed to be re-edged, stripped out and re-planted and two new beds in front of the house needed to be created.All the fencing, including the garden gate needed to be renewed. All the planting was to be stripped out and replanted except for two large fruit trees and a tall bay tree which were to be retained.For all edging we used Red Warnham brick.
The main (original) flower bed: we removed all old brick edging to the main bed.We then dug a trench, 300 mm deep.Into this we poured concrete footings.We then laid a new full brick edge of one course followed by a “brick on edge” course to from a clear standing (height) of around 100 mm.We forked over the bed adding organic compost leaving ready for planting.
The new beds in front of the house: we dug a trench, 300 mm deep, poured in concrete footings and laid a single “brick on edge” course.We infilled with 2 cubic metres of screened top soil to form new planting beds and then added organic compost leaving ready for planting.
The drive:we removed old Scottish pebbles, keeping existing compacted base and drainage slots (cambering was already evident from the original drive).Any soft spots were excavated and filled with compacted sub-base material.We then laid a 25mm layer of 10mm pea shingle (gravel).
Brick between piers/”crossovers”:We built “brick on edge” crossovers to stop the gravel migrating onto the Council pavements.In some places we had to relay parts of the Council paving to obtain correct heights.
The front door step: which had been built with small stone sections, required bull-nosed York stone in larger slabs.Therefore we ordered 1.25 mm depth (front to back), single piecesof York front bull nosed for a 14 metre width step.We removed existing stone (which is laid in 2 sections) and installed the new York step.
The fencing: we stripped out all the old fencing and put in Jacksons Venetian fencing, on the right hand side to 1.83 metres height and on the left hand side to 1.2 metres height.We installed gravel boards 150 mm in height with 150 x 150 mm slotted posts set into postcrete cement to a depth of 400 mm. The posts come up marginally higher than the fencing with a post cap above.We painted all the fencing with Cuprinol “Black Ash” wood preservative.
The planting is formal and low maintenance.
