UK family garden

How does UK family garden work, step by step?

1. 1

   Step 1: Strip back and find out what is actually there

   The first operation is removal, not placement. Site debris, spoil heaps, temporary hardstanding, the remains of the site compound and any imported material of unknown origin come off the plot. Where made ground or buried construction waste is found, the designer decides whether it is dug out or left in place, and on brownfield or garden-of-a-former-industrial plots that decision follows a contamination assessment rather than a site opinion. It is normal to lift far more material off a domestic plot than anyone allowed for: half a lorry load of buried block and mortar is an ordinary finding on a single new-build garden. The important output of this stage is knowledge - what the subsoil is, how deep the disturbance goes, and where the water sits.

2. 2

   Step 2: Fix the finished levels and the falls

   The landscape designer or the engineer sets the finished levels across the plot and every hard surface takes its level from that drawing rather than from the surface next to it. Ground falls away from the building. Paths and patios shed water to somewhere that can take it. Steps and thresholds work with the levels either side of them, and inspection covers finish flush with the surface they sit in. Setting out is worth doing properly with a level rather than by eye, because on a small plot a level that drifts by a few tens of millimetres over ten metres is the difference between a patio that drains and a patio that holds water against the wall.

3. 3

   Step 3: Deal with drainage before anything is covered up

   Land drainage, soakaways, permeable build-ups and connections to the plot's surface water system are installed while the ground is open and the plant is still on site. On heavy clay plots a garden drainage system of perforated pipe in a stone-filled trench is common, and where it is used it is laid to the layout and outfall the designer has set. Anything that has to be dug for later - an irrigation main, a garden power supply, a lighting duct, a feed to a shed - is put in now, ducted and recorded. Coming back through a finished lawn to lay a cable is a small disaster that repeats itself on almost every project where nobody asked the question early enough.

4. 4

   Step 4: Build patios and paths on a prepared sub-base

   Hard surfaces are built up rather than laid on the ground. The formation is dug out, proof-rolled or hand-compacted, and a granular sub-base is laid and compacted in layers - for a domestic patio commonly in the order of 100-150 mm of compacted granular material, and thicker where the surface will take a vehicle or where the ground below is soft. The laying course and the jointing follow the specification for the material chosen: mortar bedding for most natural stone and concrete flags, and a compacted bedding layer with jointing sand for block paving. Edges are restrained. The most common domestic paving defect is not the slab at all - it is a sub-base that was skipped or laid on soft, wet formation because the programme was tight.

5. 5

   Step 5: Set out and build the boundaries

   Fences, gates, screens and boundary walls go in while there is still access. The line is confirmed against the plot drawing and against the neighbours before a single post goes down, because a fence built 300 mm on the wrong side of a boundary is a legal problem, not a snag. Post spacing, post depth and the fixing detail follow the fence type and the exposure of the plot, and on exposed corner plots the designer commonly specifies a heavier post or a closer spacing than the standard run. Timber below ground is treated or set in concrete or a post support, and gravel boards keep the panel out of the soil. Boundaries are also the last chance to get materials in easily - once they are closed up, everything comes through the house or over the fence.

6. 6

   Step 6: Relieve compaction and import the topsoil

   Subsoil that has been trafficked is ripped or loosened before topsoil goes over it, because a smeared, compacted layer under new topsoil is a pan that roots will not cross and water will not drain through. Topsoil is then imported to the depth the specification calls for - commonly around 100-150 mm under lawns and appreciably deeper in beds and around trees. Quality is checked before it is spread, not after: texture, stone content, organic matter, drainage and the absence of contamination and weed root. Cheap topsoil is the single most expensive material on a garden project, because the cost of taking it away again includes everything that was planted in it. Soil is placed with a tracked machine or barrows in a way that does not re-compact what has just been loosened, and it is not worked when it is wet.

7. 7

   Step 7: Lawn - turf or seed, and the season that governs it

   The soil surface is graded, raked and firmed to a fine, even tilth, with the levels checked one last time against the paths and the covers. Turf gives an instant lawn and can be laid across most of the year provided it can be watered, and it has to be laid within a day or two of delivery because rolled turf heats up and dies on the pallet. Seed is cheaper and roots better in the long run but needs a genuine growing window - broadly spring or early autumn in the UK - and several weeks of protection before anyone walks on it. A midwinter handover often means seed, a temporary finish, or a return visit in spring, and it is far better to say so at tender stage than to argue about it at handover.

8. 8

   Step 8: Plant, mulch and hand over the establishment

   Trees, hedges and shrubs are set out on the ground against the planting plan and looked at before any pit is dug, because a planting plan drawn at a small scale rarely survives contact with a real garden. Pits are dug wider than the rootball with the sides broken up rather than glazed by the bucket, stock is planted at the depth it grew at, trees are staked and tied where exposure demands it, and beds are mulched. Bare-root and rootballed stock has its own planting window in the dormant season, and container stock is more flexible but still hates high summer. The project is not finished at the last plant: watering through the first season, mowing regime, tree tie checks and replacement of failures are all part of establishment, and the client is told in writing what they are taking on.