Ideas for Garden Paving Areas and Possible Finishes

Paving Areas in the Garden can take many different shapes and have a wide range of textures and colour.

We like to use interesting shapes of paving to keep areas of the garden under a common theme or link. The colour that we prefer needs to reflect the overall feel of the house and colours used in its construction as well as the surrounding areas. Here are some examples.

(Above) A Bradstone made paving slab forms a new path, steps and patio area. The gravel path in our local Newbury (or Romsey) flint aggregate links the new patio to a round seating area that matches the patio. New scalloped top close board fencing at the rear and new turf grass to the lawn create a smart new garden. Our clients asked us to provide a planting scheme for them to source and plant out themselves. We feel that this can also help our customers take ownership of their newly designed and built garden. We managed to keep some of the existing larger plants on the side fencing to give some established cover.

(Above Left) Before we started there was a very plain rectangular paved area with a straight wall. None of this blended with the new conservatory.

(Above Right) Here we have a large new area of imported natural sandstone paving creating a larger curved-edge patio seating area with a new low wall to support the lawn and curved plum slate covered feature planting border. The area also extended around the side of the house.

(Left) This is a rather late in the day picture of some locally made slabs that we used to create a new level seating area at the top of a very steep sloping garden. The doorway had a new hardwood door fitted to the existing oak timber jambs with new wrought iron ironmongery. The steps up to the door were constructed to give easy access to the narrow roadway outside the opening. This area receives the sun virtually all day and has views out over our local water meadows.

This was a rather forlorn and overgrown pre-formed pond that the owners had decided to have paved over. After removing the waste and putting in a considerable amount of hardcore that we used a plate compacter to consolidate we formed this small but secluded seating area. The rear banking was retained as a rockery area using the old edging stones from the pond sides. The random edges had a weed-suppressing membrane laid with a gravel surface finish.

The owners of this garden that borders onto open grass grazing fields had managed to buy an extra area of ground. A Local Authority Planning rule meant that the new area was not able to have any permanent structures on it except for the enclosing fence. We decided to keep the natural feel and enclosed two sides with natural British native hedging species of shrubs and trees. A number of fruit and decorative trees were added to provide shelter and to frame the view to the distant hills. The paving areas were at two different heights due to the sloping ground. Matching shallow riser curved steps linked the two areas and the low wall provided a seating area at the lower level. Both round cobbles and crushed green granite were used as surface textures beside the paved areas of patio.

This is an example of blending a new paved area into an existing garden with formal features already in place. On the right you can see the existing rectangular pond with pots around it.

We designed a three-quarter slab circle to fit nicely onto the new slabs edging the rectangular pond.

Using 100mm square natural stone setts (or cobbles) to form a sweeping edge blends this in with other existing features. Green crushed slate over a weedscreen membrane forms decorative areas at each end of the existing pool. (Left and Right)

This small estate garden was fully landscaped in order to level the lawn fro the elderly lady owner. We also formed a circumventing path to link the new paved seating area to the area by the back door. A rather elaborate pergola with patterned screens provided shading and support for scented and colourful flowered climbing plants over the main seating area of slabs.

To give you some idea of the detail that is involved here are examples of a recessed paving manhole or Inspection Chamber cover and the way that edging and bricks can be used to good effect.