Owen Clutton Web Site

Owen Clutton Gardens
07939 763223 / owen@owenclutton.com

Major landscaping, rockery construction and new terrace near Uckfield, East Sussex

The need for landscaping this garden arose initially after the construction of a swimming pool. That work was carried out in winter 2000 and completely destroyed most of the existing garden. The section showing my work there in 2001 is lower down on this page.

The swimming pool was initially surrounded with reinforced concrete covered with thick green foam rubber, then lawn then beds. Between 2001 - 2009 the rubber gradually deteriorated and the need arose to replace it. The clients wanted an extensive terrace to completely obliterate the higher lawns near the pool.

I used a digger and breaker to remove all of the existing lawn and concrete surround which was difficult due to the reinforcing. After that, all of the materials had to be moved up to the site in a track barrow. The above photos show how the paving was cut to recreate the curved top of the rockery and other beds.

The stone which was used is 'hand cut black' Indian Sandstone which was purchased from Ajeer. It is actually a blend of grey and some brown, although it does appear more black when wet. Its colour blends in very well with the adjacent weathered hardwood deck and even the big rockery rocks.

We wanted to make a big set of steps which would fit in with the scale of the rockery and bridge the gap between the lower lawn and the higher new terrace. A lot of level-taking was required to get this right, along with much painstaking arithmetic to work out the optimum, even step size. The steps are about 3m wide and rise 1.2m from the slab set into the lawn to the top terrace.

All of the joints, except around the pond, are pointed with a mortar mix which was dyed to try to colour match the slabs.

The big steps blend in well with the adjacent rockery which is made out of very large rocks.

The pond was already there but we relined and reconstructed it in 2009.

The following pictures and notes show the original work which was carried out in 2000-1.

The excavation for the swimming pool uncovered some massive sandstone rocks which we decided to make into an impressive bridge between the raised pool and the lower garden.

The central feature of this rockery is the steps, constructed simply of very large rocks. This type of material is rarely available due to the cost and difficulty of moving it; indeed all of these were placed, with effort, using a mini-digger. The small pond was converted from a brick arbour which they had made previously.

The initial state and layout is difficult to see in the photos, but basically the ground sloped haphazardly away from the pool. We had to move a lot of soil to make the artificial bank and without affecting the pool's support; we also brought in tonnes of topsoil from elsewhere in the garden to the effect that the whole lower garden is now about a foot higher than it used to be. We incorporated drainage into this area before the ground was levelled.

The project took a long time over different stages, mainly due to ongoing foul weather which kept the soil wet. It took two of us two days to lay all of the turf, which amounted to nearly 750 square metres- about 1,000 individual turves! Completed Spring 2001.

The page relating to a big deck is also in this same garden- it is between the house and the swimming pool.