Case study
Sandstone courtyard and drainage in front of a garden room in Twickenham
- Location
- Twickenham, London (TW2)
- Timescale
- Available on request
- Services used
- Indian sandstone paving, linear drainage, oak sleeper planters, brick step
- Approximate value
- Available on request
The brief
A courtyard nobody used
This garden sits below the back of a Twickenham house, reached down a set of timber deck steps, with a cedar clad garden room at the far end. Between the two was a small patch of thin grass, weeds and bare soil, with a few artificial grass mats laid by the garden room door.
Walls, a fence and the garden room close it in on every side, so whatever went down had to deal with the rain as well as look good.
Before and after
The same garden, available on request apart
The build
Big slabs for a small space
The old surface was dug out and replaced with a compacted MOT sub-base over a woven membrane. Around 19 sqm of Fossil Mint Indian sandstone went down on top, in large 600 x 900mm calibrated slabs. Big slabs suit a small space: fewer joints, and the stone's colour does the work.
In a courtyard boxed in like this, water needs a planned way out. Linear channel drains were set into the paving and connected to new underground pipework, so the stone sheds water into the drains instead of pooling against the garden room.
Oak sleepers, fixed with heavy duty brackets, form raised planters along the edges, and a new step built in yellow stock brick and capped in the same sandstone leads up to the garden room doors. The paving carries on down the side of the deck, so the stone runs unbroken from the house to the back of the garden.
The result
A courtyard that works in all weather
What was a muddy patch is now a warm sandstone courtyard you can walk straight out onto from the deck, with planting held in oak beds rather than spilling across the ground, and drainage built in for the wet months.
Services used on this project
See more of our work in Twickenham.
Free site visit
Start your own garden project
We'll come out, look at the space and give you a proper fixed price, not a ballpark over the phone.