Lyddington · 2025
A cottage garden with a sandstone terrace
A tired back garden turned into a lawn, two deep borders and a sunny terrace for a family who wanted to eat outside from May to September.
- Garden area
- 420 m²
- Weeks on site
- 5
- Final cost
- £38,400
The brief and the build
The garden had a cracked concrete patio, a lawn that was mostly moss, and a row of leylandii that had taken most of the light. The brief was simple: somewhere to eat outside, a lawn the children could use, and flowers from May to the first frost.
We took the leylandii out, moved the terrace to the sunny corner, and laid 62 m² of Indian sandstone on a full sub-base with a fall towards a new border. The lawn was stripped, rotavated, topped with 50 mm of screened soil and turfed in the first week of October.
The two borders run either side of the lawn and are planted for succession: alliums and irises in May, roses and geraniums in June, then asters and grasses into October. We planted in 3 litre pots so the borders looked settled by the first July.
“They told us the terrace would take eleven days and it took ten. The lawn they laid in October was the best-looking grass on the street by April.”
