When we moved into this house fifteen years ago, I left behind the garden that I had lovingly created in our first home. Our new garden was much bigger and was full of potential, but the amount of work required inside the house meant that the garden took a back seat. Thankfully, we had taken the time in our first year here to plant lots of hedging and also our woodland garden, which have matured beautifully, but the garden had been largely neglected other than that. The lockdowns over the past eighteen months definitely gave us a greater appreciation of our outdoor space and we decided it was time to give our garden the attention it needed and deserved by hiring a professional landscaper.
The purpose of this post is to describe some of the mistakes we've made in the past so that others can avoid getting themselves into the same trouble. Also, since sharing this process on social media, I've had several queries from people asking about the process of hiring and working with a professional landscaper, so I will also shed some light on what that involved in our case. Most of all, I hope this will give some insight into the kind of work that's possible to have done, and what the process looks like, which may be helpful if you are considering a similar overhaul of your garden.
July 2021.
This is an 'after' photo of our garden, but it feels like the beginning. Up until now, it wasn't possible to do much in the garden because such significant groundworks were required: there was no point planting flower beds that would ultimately need to be dug up. Now I can finally make a start at turning it into the garden I've been dreaming of for years. I am so excited to get going, but first let's look back at what it took to get to this point ...
We Made Mistakes
In the post Introducing Our Garden, I shared some pics of how our site looked when we first moved in here: it was basically a field! It had never been properly graded or landscaped, and there were still rough patches of leftover building rubble. There was also a natural sharp change in level halfway down our back garden; like a step, but yet not defined enough to terrace either. The first job we ever did in the garden was to hire a man with a digger to smooth out that level drop so that it was more of a gradual slope. We thought we were also hiring him to grade the site, but instead he just turned over the soil. We probably didn't have the proper terminology to know what to ask for, and he didn't seem to have the expertise to know what was required. The end result was that the whole site was now full of lumps and bumps. This made it extremely difficult to mow, as the lawnmower ran aground on hillocks and got its wheel stuck in holes. Before long, vigorous weeds took over.
Old phone pic of our garden taken in October 2008.
January 2010.
We decided that we needed to get the site properly graded (to even out all the lumps & bumps) and seeded with lawn seed. That's when we made our second mistake: instead of hiring a landscaper to do this work, we got a local agricultural contracter. They came in and sprayed the site with herbicide to kill the existing vegetation ... and then the weather turned. We had several weeks of very wet weather, during which time it was impossible to bring heavy machinery onto site (doing so would compact the soil so that nothing would grow well in it afterwards). When the sunshine finally came, the agricultural contracter was needed urgently by the local farmers to make silage to provide winter feed for livestock, which was understandably a priority. But what it meant for us is that our lawns didn't get done that year.
Unbelievably, the exact same thing happened the following summer: the contractor came in, sprayed the site ... and never came back due to weather and other agricultural priorities. At this point, we were thoroughly fed up with the garden. We felt we were getting nowhere with it, so we decided to focus on doing work on the interior of our house and come back to the garden at a later date.
The Plan
During lockdown last year, we found ourselves using our garden a lot more: with travel restrictions in place due to the pandemic, the outdoor space we had on our doorstep became increasingly important to us. That's when we decided that it was time to turn our attentions back to the garden and to start to realise its full potential.
We already knew exactly what we wanted to do with the garden long-term, so it was just a matter of deciding how much of that grand plan we were willing to commit to at this stage. Initially, our plan was just to grade the site and seed the lawn; basically to bring it to a state where it could be more easily maintained. Once we'd committed to getting all that done, we decided that if the machinery was already going to be on site, it was probably a good idea to have them dig out the pond we'd also been dreaming of creating. Then I was advised to get any hard landscaping done before doing the grading work and lawns, so then the patio also became part of the current project.
Finding a Professional Landscaper
Unfortunately for us, many other people had the same idea during lockdown to get work done on their garden, and finding a landscaper became like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Most had months of work booked in advance, and were unwilling to take on any more clients at that time. When we finally got one who said he'd come and give us a quote, he failed to show up time and time again.
In the meantime, we had started doing our own research. Since the hard landscaping was going to be our starting point, we began looking at the paving options for our patio. Our nearest supplier is Galway Stone, so we paid a visit to their yard to view the various stone pavers in person. The decision to choose limestone had already been made for us to some degree because Roscommon limestone had been used in the construction of our house, and we are also surrounded by dry limestone walls. So it seemed the only logical choice. However, it's very difficult to get an impression of what the stone looks like from viewing a picture on the internet, so the visit to Galway Stone proved very useful. We had been considering Indian limestone, but once we saw our native Irish Kilkenny limestone in person, we knew that was what we wanted.
Roscommon limestone on the walls and Kilkenny limestone paving slabs.
Moreover, Galway Stone were also able to provide us with a list of people in the industry whose work they could recommend to do the job of laying the patio for us. I looked up the work of each of those people on the list and started by calling Pakie from Lane Landscaping. After talking to him on the phone, I knew he was the man for the job. Like all the other professionals, Pakie had work booked for months in advance, so we had to wait our turn. Unlike the other people we had talked to, Pakie turned up to do the work exactly when he said he would. (And this is definitely not an ad; I am just happy to recommend good Irish businesses.)
Landscaping Work
Before the landscaping crew arrived, we had to prepare by spraying the site a few weeks in advance to kill off the existing vegetation. We normally don't use chemicals in our garden, but this is a necessary step so that the landscapers have clean soil to work with. Before spraying, I dug up any wildflowers I could and planted them into pots with the intention of replanting them into our planned wildflower meadow around our pond.
Preparing the site for landscaping work.
The landscapers started by digging the hole for the pond. It was one thing for me to plan all this on paper, but seeing it start to form before my eyes felt a bit surreal at first. The scale of the work was more than I had ever imagined it would be.
Excavating the pond.
Living in east Galway, it wasn't long before the digger hit solid rock. That was removed down to the required depth (I'll write a separate post later on with all the details about creating the pond). Then the foundation was dug for our patio and the rock from the pond was put into the patio foundation. This helped to bring up the levels for the patio, which was much needed as the house stood proud of the existing ground level by about 50cm.
Using rocks from the pond excavation to build the foundation for the patio.
We were very lucky that we didn't need to bring in any topsoil. The soil dug out of the pond was distributed to areas where the levels were too low. Also, because we are planning a large wildflower meadow for the back of the garden, that area doesn't need much depth of soil. So a good amount of topsoil was removed from the meadow area and also redistributed around the garden.
Groundworks to grade site and redistribute topsoil.
Topsoil from the wildflower meadow area was also used to bring up the levels in our front garden.
While the initial groundworks were being carried out, the foundation for the new concrete path around the garage was dug. A lorry load of gravel arrived, and some of this was poured out as a base for the paths. Shuttering was erected, expansion gaps prepared, and then the lorry arrived to pour the cement while the work crew floated it.
Preparation for new concrete paths.
The remainder of the gravel was used to form the base of our new patio, and was poured in on top of the rocks that came from the pond. Surveying equipment was used to lay out the required levels, and sand was used to even out the surface and create the desired gradient (water should drain way from the house, obviously!).
Laying the foundation for the new extended patio.
We wanted quite a large patio area, so it took several days to lay the paving slabs. I was very impressed by the team's attention to detail: because limestone is porous, each slab was coated with a primer before being bedded into cement.
Patio in progress.
They also cut a nice bullnose detail onto the edge of the slabs that formed the doorstep.
Finally, an exterior grout (Flowpoint) was used in the joints between the slabs, and the edges haunched with concrete.
Completed patio prior to finishing groundworks.
With all the hard landscaping in place, the groundwork was then completed by bringing the soil level up to meet the edge of the patio and the new path.
I had my own ideas for where I wanted to place borders, so Hubby and I marked those out. We used a hosepipe to work out the curves, and then sprayed the outline when we were happy with how it looked.
Marking out the flower beds.
The next day, the landscapers came back in and used a stone raker to clear any stones on the surface and then seeded the lawn.
Groundworks finished and lawns seeded.
The entire process took five weeks with three separate teams working on the groundwork and paths, the patio, and the lawns. The crew were not on site every day during that time, but from start to finish was about a five week period.
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We are beyond thrilled with the work done. Mowing the lawn already takes far less time than it used to, and is so much easier now that the ground is even. Plus we have been lucky with some lovely summery weather to enjoy spending time outdoors on our new patio. The landscaping work done has genuinely changed our lives as we now spend more time out in the fresh air enjoying the space we have.
There is still lots of work to do overall in the garden: flower beds, a wildflower meadow, and the pond, all of which will keep us very busy in the coming months (and years!). Of course, I'll be sharing it all here as we go. Plus there's still one area of the garden that we haven't developed at all yet ... so much potential still to fulfill!
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