A Drive Finnished

I have just completed a job more or less on time. When I say more or less it is in fact a week behind schedule, but by recent standards this is pretty good. Because I am busy with maintenance work through out most of Spring Summer and Autumn I like to do my landscaping during the winter, previous years I have got away with this, but this year I am very behind. Of the three jobs I had in the book one is now complete, one half done - now just waiting for warmer weather to complete the deck and the planting; and the one that was originally scheduled to have been completed this coming week, not yet started.

These are some shots of the drive just after we had started, I always seem to forget to get proper before shots, just to keen to get stuck in I suppose. In this case it does mean that the shots include both Sue and Gloria - there are no prizes for working out which is which.







And these are the after shots. I am really pleased with this job, I have been undertaking maintenance at this garden for several years now, and have wanted to redo this drive since I started. The gravel had got bedded into soil, leaves had rotted down into it and the levels had long been lost.

There were big dips and mounds where vehicle tyres had kicked up the gravel and then bedded it in, paving slabs had been put in up to the garage but most of them had broken, in all this gave the whole house a bit of an unloved demeanour. Now it all looks a lot more kempt and loved, and I cam in within budget! all in all I am pretty pleased.

The house is a fantastic Edwardian Family House near Beckenham Junction, it is the last of these houses in the area that is still in single family occupancy, all the rest have been knocked into flats, or turned over for commercial use of one form or another, so we have been trying to keep as much of the original character as possible, with a period style of rockery gravel drive and a lavender hedge under the bay window. I replanted this hedge a couple of years ago, so the this coming year I hope it will put on some serious growth and start to look more like a hedge.