A slight panic over the paving!

Friday I met up with my landscaper Matt of Greenbelt Landscapes as we’ve had to make a significant change to the hard landscaping. Natural Paving who are supplying the stone for free can no longer get hold of the Purbeck Sands that we’d initially chosen. Such a shame as it is a stunning smooth stone, cool to the touch and a contemporary pale cream, a lovely contrast to the plants.

Matt brought along a few other samples for me to look at. One is a bright light cream, not unlike the Purbeck Sands but with a very textured finish. The other is Oyster Travertine, which has a range of beige and brown tones and although smooth to the touch, has a textured pattern. It’s hard to decide as I hanker after the original choice but end up going with the Oyster, mainly because I realise that the textured stone might blend too well with the rendered walls and end up looking too bland. The Oyster Travertine on the other hand will pick up the warm tones in the grasses and create a lovely contrast with the rendered walls.

Whilst I’m with Matt I let him know that I’ve decided to take the timber arches out of the design altogether after receiving feedback from the RHS when we submitted the design. They thought the arches were too flimsy and I don’t want to make them any more chunky, in fact we probably couldn’t as it would be hard to get the right timber in those dimensions, and any other arch design could start to look too fussy. The design theme is simplicity so I decide that the simplest solution is just to remove them. This leaves me uncertain whether to keep the timber in the design of the bench as it would be the only timber in the whole design. We decide to go with a cantilevered stone seat, keeping lines clean and simple. The materials in the garden are the background to the plants, so keeping them simple and to a minimum number (only stone and render!) will hopefully create the very sophisticated look that I envisage in my head!