Mark McNee

Tag: Designing a garden

  • Planting up an area with grown cover shrubs

    Planting up an area with grown cover shrubs

    The secret to making a low maintenance garden border is to start off with no perennial weeds, after that the maintenance is no worse than a lawn in the first couple of years and far less thereafter. When creating a border most people make the mistake of making it too narrow, a 300mm (1 foot)…

  • How to build a sleeper raised bed

    How to build a sleeper raised bed

    As well as retaining walls timber sleepers can be used to create raised beds. A great variety of shapes can be created using these, but the shape of the sleepers only really work well with shapes based on right-angles. This though still provides great scope by interlocking  the basic squares and rectangles,  and varying the…

  • Fixing trellis to a wall

    Fixing trellis to a wall

    Trellis is a very effective way of training climbers against a wall and can either be bought or made from scratch. Fixing it to the wall though can present problems but with a little care result can be both durable and effective. Equipment: Method:

  • How to make trellis

    How to make trellis

    Trellis can be purchased ready made from garden centres and DIY stores but it is in a limited range of sizes, you only have one spacing for the lathes and it is often quite light weight. A far better way is to make it yourself from pressure treated timber and you can chose any sizes…

  • Choosing paving materials for your garden

    With the vast range of possible paving materials, it can feel a bit daunting when you first start looking at paving materials. To try to reduce the selection down to a more manageable size, it is well to consider the practicalities imposed on you by what you are planning to use the paving for. You…

  • Taking over an established garden

    Taking over an established garden

    Most people when they buy a new house find they are taking over an existing garden and this will present certain challenges; you have, after all, bought their house not their tastes. It is therefore inevitable not everything in the garden you are going to like and/or want. It is reasonable to assume on first…

  • Establishing a garden hedge

    Establishing a garden hedge

    Hedges have been an integral part of gardens since the earliest times and encompass a vast range of ideas. Their main purpose though is to divide up space; be it marking the boundaries of a garden or dividing up the area within them. Many people shy away from hedges on the grounds that they take…

  • How to build a free-standing timber pergola

    How to build a free-standing timber pergola

    Equipment: 100 mm by 100 mm notched posts (4 inches by 4 inches) 150 mm by 50 mm sawn and preservative treated timber (6 inches by 2 inches) 100 mm by 50 mm sawn and preservative treated timber (4 inches by 2 inches) String lines Timber pegs or steel pins 10 mm dowel or M10 coach bolts…

  • How to lay crazy paving

    How to lay crazy paving

    Crazy paving has fallen right out of fashion; killed first by release of the modern mottle coloured concrete riven flags by Bradstone in the early 1980’s followed by the cheap imported stone flags from the Far East more recently. That said it still has its uses, particularly where an informal path is needed or a…

  • Creating a low maintenance garden

    Over many years of designing and creating gardens the most frequent request I have received is for a “low maintenance” garden. I have never been asked for a high maintenance one! This is usually followed something along the lines of “so we want most of it just lawn”. The real problem is that people muddle…