Bourn Garden Makeover Project

Bourn is a small village and civil parish in South Cambridgeshire, England and a perfect setting for a full garden makeover project. Surrounding villages include Caxton, Eltisley and Cambourne. It is 8 miles from the county town of Cambridge and home to our nice customers, Mr & Mrs Diamond.

When Mr & Mrs Diamond invited us to survey their garden they explained that it needed a complete revamp as it had become difficult to maintain and was very run down. As you can see from the image below the lawn was water logged, uneven and everything looked tired.

We took a detailed brief from Mr & Mrs Diamond to understand their taste in materials, colours & features. They explained that the garden would needed to be designed with adults and pets in mind. They wanted a colour scheme of white, green & grey. It needed to be modern, low maintenance and practical.

The new garden concept

Simplicity was key when designing this garden. It had fundamental and costly issues that needed to be prioritised over creative pieces. The garden had poor drainage and a 600mm + gradient falling away from the property.

Work started on the new garden

To overcome the drainage issues we recommended installing a Type 2 MOT 75mm sub-base with Mayfair Artificial Lawn on a slight gradient falling away from the property towards Bourn Brook at the bottom of the garden. Artificial grass is more effective at draining than conventional grass and the finish would look very clean and modern.

To save time and waste we worked around the existing gradients creating two levels. The upper level would have grey porcelain installed along with a high quality ACO HexDrain slot drain to prevent water build up.

Here are some images of the ground work, footings and block work being installed...

To make the patio a little more interesting and to reduce the cost per m2 we integrated two large raised bed areas into the patio. The original Omega lattice top decorative fence panels would have worked with a country style garden design however we wanted to create something more modern so we installed 1.8 x 2m traditional fence panels, attached a weather proofing membrane and cladded it with 3.2 treated timber batons.

Once the fence and Type 2 MOT had been installed we started to install the porcelain patio. As you can see in the picture below at this point the garden design is really starting to take shape.

The rendering team then arrive on site to freshen up the property, replacing all the yellow old render with white as you saw in the initial garden design. We had already installed free standing glass balustrades to create a modern boundary between the patio and lawn but without obstructing the view or making it feel to enclosed.

A finished garden

When the rendering team completed their job we went back to site to tidy up, install the artificial lawn, fill the raise beds with top soil and plant up for the client. You can really see the transformation at this stage.