The old fountain after all the ivy and climbers had been removed

We arrived at the client’s property intending to carry out some tree surgery, a few crown reductions and fell a couple of old leylandii. We gave him an estimate and then returned to carry out the work once the costs were agreed. The client was so happy with the work that he asked us if we offered any other services and we then had a conversation about all the other projects that the client had in mind. It soon became apparent that there were a lot more works that the client would like us to carry out so we quickly reorganized the diary so that on completion of the tree works we would start the landscaping project that required urgent attention to meet another firm’s construction deadline. Luckily our other clients were not put out by the sudden amount of additional work that was commissioned.

Ben surveying the mound that had to be demolished. Does 'Close Encounters' ring any bells?

One of our landscapers surveys the task ahead. The job seemed straight forward enough until we considered the amount of water being held back by the mound. A solution was easily reached by using a large diameter pipe and syphoning off some of the water to equal out the pressure on the lining of the pond.

The large pipe quickly emptied out the required amount of water so works would not be held up

After informing the client about our intentions we set about emptying some of the water in the pond

With the water pressure off the wall we started demolishing the structure

Now we were happy that there would be no nasty accidents we began demolishing the old fountain base.

Using two breakers we quickly broke out the stone

Many tons of hardcore came out of the mound and had to be barrowed uphill to the waiting lorry

Just underneath the decorative stone there were tons of old rubble and general rubbish that would need to be removed off site. This was no mean feat as the work was at the bottom of a slope at the end of the garden.

We separated the reusable rock and cleaned the mortar off each stone for reuse later

We ended up barrowing all the debris out of the garden without a hitch but there were a few sore backs by the end of the job.

Finally we found soil and were able to prepare the ground for the new layout

We imported soil from another area of the garden and added manure as well to give the plants the best possible start

A second bed was created with sleepers and the raspberries were relocated and watered in

We reconstructed the wall using the reclaimed stone and planted the bed out with existing stock from the client's garden

The bed with wall all finished, now providing a great organic fruit bed for the client. We even built a seat in the wall to sit on and pick strawberries in those long summer evenings

Great feedback from the customer too.