CASE STUDY

Landscaping Project in Cambridge

With everyday hustle and bustle in the busy city of Cambridge, our brief for this project was to create and build a warm and relaxing feel to a space that needed some extra privacy. 

Emerald Landscapes were called out to visit a couple that needed to unwind on those summer evenings and make use of their garden between busy lifestyles. 

We all know that taking a little bit of time back to ourselves is where we really get to reflect and appreciate what makes us happy, what better place to achieve this than in your own garden. 

Landscaping Project in Cambridge 

The project was made up of several elements that combined created the warm and cosy traditional feel in a very busy city centre.
First up we removed two old crazy paving patios that had been down for a very long time and made the whole place feel tired and depressing. The existing flower beds lacked love and needed to start again to provide colour and put a smile back on our customers faces again. 

Planning and designing the landscape

When planning and designing the landscape we added a bit of our creative flair to enhance our customer brief on the relaxing feel. We built an Oak sleeper raised bed with an incorporated bench where you can sit and enjoy a morning coffee with a newspaper, or an evening glass of wine and a book to unwind from the busy day. This little nook around the side of the house is private yet personable and certainly a well used part of the garden. 

The paving installed was a 4 flag design natural sandstone that had warming tones of colour to compliment the rest of the garden and make you want to walk barefooted from one side to the other. Our green fingered Landscape team then set about ticking the privacy box by planting a row of pleached evergreen Photinias along the boundary fence to help shut out the rest of the city life. 

They went in with tree stakes and ties for support, manure in the beds to help with nutrition and bedding plants below for that extra colour to finish. A newly laid lawn completes the soft landscaping elements within the project, leveled and compacted ready to use. 

The old gate our customer had up was a wrought iron one that was not private at all, we changed this out to a new tongue and groove gate with hinges and fittings. Out the front of the property was also in need of some surfacing work to round off the landscaping makeover. 

Sleeper raised borders installed to define the freshly laid lawn, accompanied by a new paving path to tie in the front driveway and the rear garden. 

Resin bound gravel Driveway

Driveway was the final piece of the puzzle to round off a multi aspect landscaping project.

Resin bound gravel was the choice of surfacing this time around, its permeability, overall sleek and contemporary finish topped off with the choice in over 25 colours, makes it a great choice. 

The makeup of the driveway is built in 3 structural layers to form the solid foundation and SuDs ( Sustainable Drainage system ) compliant surface which does not require any additional drainage such as ACO drains or a soakaway system. 

We broke out and excavated the old concrete using a pneumatic breaker and digger, the waste was then removed by a grab lorry. New concrete flat top edging was required, ready to take the resin. The first of the structural layers was then installed on top of a Geo-textile membrane, 100mm of permeable MOT type 3 laid and compacted using a 1 ton roller. Next was 75mm of open grade 14mm binder course of permeable tarmac, this makes up the second structural layer of the driveway. Again compacted with a 1 ton roller left 20mm off the finish height ready for the resin bound gravel. 

Due to the tarmac naturally having lots of oils within its compound, after this process we have to leave the surface for 10-14 days to allow all of the oils time to leach out of the surface. This is done to guarantee that when we come to lay the resin bound gravel over the top there will not be an oily layer between the 2 preventing any lifting to the finished surface.

When we returned the final structural layer was applied using aluminium trowels and smoothed out to a uniform thickness of 18-20mm. The resin bound gravel cures in around 4-6 hours so we secured the perimeter to make sure the postman did not stroll across our new driveway. 

A final clean up of the whole site and some finishing touches from our customer with pillows to the seated area make this a fabulous little project in the busy city centre of Cambridge.

We take great pride in our overall finish and details within the brief and build that our service is second to none, call us today for a free consultation and quote.