GARDEN IDEAS:Interesting Paving Designs From The Team At Ashbrook

The concept for this garden was somewhat unusual—the lady in question was 90 years old. Her back garden was flooded last year, and she wanted drainage put in. She wanted a nice garden, but what she had was some grass with bits of rough concrete, and she was tripping up over it. We had an opportunity with this garden to create some interesting paving designs.

We came up with a plan and we built a wall to raise her garden so she wouldn’t have to bend down; a nice raised wall with capping.

We put in nice plants and on the top we have rubber matting in a red colour—it looks really vibrant.

The paving is nice and smooth and level, and it’s done in different sizes with ivory paving. We can see the drainage next to the back wall, so her garden will be well drained—it’s 45 sq m of paving, so it is quite a large garden. This is one of the largest paving designs we completed this winter!

The plants we used are all small-growing plants, some conifers, heathers, and perennials, so she has a nice mix.

It was the end of November or early December when we finished this garden so there weren’t too many perennials around, but we planted them in and they will come up in the summer and give great colour.

Nothing will grow too big—she didn’t want anything too big, so we concentrated on that.

There’ll be lovely fragrances in the garden too. There is a plant called Sarcococca; Christmas Box is its common name. There is a fantastic scent off that, and then we have lavenders and some creeping thyme, so there are some lovely scents.

The garden is also very easy to maintain. The paving is sealed so the dirt can’t get into it, and it won’t fade in colour. The plants won’t grow very big either, so they should be easy to maintain.

The whole job took two men four days.

We had to clean out the garden first, build the foundations for the wall, build the wall, and then lay the patio. Before we worked on it, there was just some old cement that she was tripping over and a bit of grass, with a couple of shrubs dotted here and there.

One thing that makes this garden unique is the shape: it goes off into a point. It is a corner house and the houses on either side left the garden narrowing into a corner. But we made the best of that, and we put the walling in and put the beds around the wall to maximise the space.

Drop in the Ashbrook Garden Centre and Landscaping, also known as the Ashbourne Garden Centre,  to purchase any materials displayed above (directions here), or call us if you would like to book a free garden design consultation on 0 1 8 3 5 4 3 8 1