New Member with a lot of hard work ahead

Hi all!

Last april myself and my partner bought our 1930's house, after viewing it at night , we fell in love with the potential of this old property with original floors indoors, however we didn't expect the garden to be quite the extensive project it has now began to be and although I'm doing 90% of the work myself i have found I'm constantly asking for advise so here i am asking for some guidance .
heres a couple pictures of where we started and where we are at now, as you can see we started with a lot of overgrown and also dead trees and decided best to strip the garden back to its complete shell and start designing and next is fencing, however we have a lot of concrete paths that are coming up with a bit of hard work and a very uneven plot especially at the end of the garden.
My Idea is to rotavate the top of the garden where the concrete was too and to rake it level but not using a rotavator before and not levelling a garden before i was wondering if there is anything else i need to consider before doing this.
Sorry for the essay and ALL ideas and hints are appreciated massively.

 

Welcome, Liam! What a lovely long garden, what direction does it face?

 

hi guys!
the garden faces east, as the sun sets it keeps the most sun on the very bottom of the garden so I'm going to hopefully build a nice patio and bedding area at the bottom with dare i say it a home made wood burning pizza oven ( luckily i work with these so know the basics )
And yes FC they have all commented on the extra light! and its brightened our kitchen up no end going to pot some smaller fruit trees that i can hopefully plant in bedders and won't get out of hand but ill need advise on them at a later date haha

 

Hi Liam...welcome to GC

 

cheers fern,

does anyone here have any advice when it comes to using wooden posts for supports for decking?
i plan to have a raised deck however i have quite wet ground yearly round, i want to do my decking but i don't want to find in 2-3 years I'm replacing the support posts as they have become rotten? what would be the best way ?

 

to GC @liam green lovely of you to join us and really helpful of you to post pictures. You've put a lot of hard work and effort in clearing your space, well done! You have a really good sized garden to play with there

One of our members has been posting about his decking progress for a few weeks now and may be able to give you some sound advice based on his own knowledge and experience. I'm tagging @martin-f and he'll hopefully see this and be able to offer you a tip or two. I'm sure we have other members who could also pass on their experiences too but my brain isn't function beyond last Wednesday at the moment

I'm really looking forward to seeing your progress and sharing your gardening journey with you.

Congratulations on your new home and I hope you have many happy and precious times there

 

Hi Liam welcome to the forum,

I have clay about 14 inch down so ive used sleepers and sat them on blocks with gravel below for drainage, you have lots of options doing it this way was more expensive than other ways but the end result looks great to me, you can follow my progress from here.
http://gardenerscorner.co.uk/forum/threads/work-in-progress.92831/page-3

 

hi martin, cheers for the advice! the decking is probably looking like a mid summer job now but I'm trying to base it on long lasting rather than worrying about cost, I'm a firm believer of do it cheap do it twice or even thrice lol. i have also found a merchant selling broken concrete fence posts at £1 a foot so contemplating getting a shed load of 3 foot posts and concreting them 2 foot deep and securing the raised deck to the top with iron angle brackets but again thats for the future, i have however just ordered my 16 fence panels and posts and gravel boards to suit, for fitting this weekend, one query for anyone who has done concrete post fencing , is postcrete as hard and long lasting a fix as ballast and cement mix? if anyone knows it would be greatly appreciated as my panels come friday so need to get the fix by then
Thanks Again guys

 

hi Guys and girls,
8ft concrete fence posts and and panels and gravel boards coming friday afternoon for a weekend of graft, still not decided on post crete or ballast and cement mix to secure the posts I'm burying them 2 ft deep each any ideas to stop any movement now and in the future?
all help appreciated guys thanks

 

Perfect that's what I was after really my head was saying ballast concrete mix but a few people I know have used postcrete but it's so much more expensive! If there is no actual benefit over a traditional mix then a traditional mix it will be! I'll get some pictures up Sunday of my progress

 

TBH Liam nothing wrong with postcrete your creating yourself work for nothing using anything else, ive been in the building trade for nearly 30yrs .