I love being able to bring a bit of personality to a garden. At the start, I scour the site to seeing if there are any gems. Can I reclaim these from the existing garden and incorporate them into the project? Such materials have way more character and patina and are more original than anything you find in a builder’s yard. And there is often a story and feeling of belonging that comes with them.
Garden path
In an early garden redesign in Edinburgh, my clients were upgrading their Victorian house. They had removed the original chunky flagstones from the kitchen floor. These were perfect for creating a beautifully weathered front garden path. It looked as if it had been trodden by postmen for generations.
Garden steps
In another project in rural Midlothian, my clients had some wobbly narrow old steps down into their garden. This made the garden inaccessible and uninviting. The couple were very keen to replace the steps with new paving, as they felt this would make them more stable. With a little persuading, we kept the beautiful old stone from the steps. But created a wider, more solid set of steps, drawing the family down into the garden. These retained the charm and patina and the spirit of footsteps of resident gardeners past.
Gabion bench
A couple of years ago, I was working on a garden on an island off the west coast of Scotland. Bringing materials onto the island and removing waste materials from the island incurred significant costs. This focussed the mind on working with what was already on site. But rather than compromising the project, I think this enhanced the garden. I was lucky, because at the time the house was being gutted. We worked with the builders to salvage some characterful old bricks being removed from an internal wall. Perfect for filling a gabion bench for owners and guests to sit on when they gathered for a barbecue. And I’m sure those bricks overheard many a conversation of island life in times gone by.
Slate border edge
Working on a rural property in East Lothian, my clients had just replaced a leaky tiled roof on the stable block. We used the original tiles to create an edge to a border of beech topiary in the garden. Both the topiary and the tile border are beautiful in the way that they catch the light and cast shadows. This creates so much texture. And heartening that the slates that sheltered the horses for decades, have a new lease of life in the garden.
Carbon footprint and waste in the landscaping industry
Often the first step in building a garden is for landscapers to clear the garden of existing materials. These are skipped and sent to landfill. To reclaim and repurpose materials from site can, with a little creativity, result in a far more original and characterful outcome, rather than being a compromise.
This significantly reduces the carbon consumption required to quarry or manufacture and transport new materials onto site. Often from overseas and where labourers work under appalling conditions. Not to mention significantly reducing the waste going to landfill.
If you are starting from scratch with no existing materials then some good places to reclaim materials are –
• local architectural salvage yards
• Facebook marketplace
• Freecycle
• Ebay
• kerbside skips
It is also far better to work to a mindset of building a garden that will be there for the long term. Avoid the latest garden ‘trends’ and throw away culture that we can easily slip into without thinking.
