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Garden help/advice

Hi,
We had someone start the job of extending our patio, our lawn is quite steep and therefore needed some of it dug out and taken away.
These workers brought round a small digger into the garden, dug up a large area and left us with half of a garden...
There were many promises made of "we will be back tomorrow" but in 2 weeks they only showed up on site for parts of 3 days.  We have since told them to go away.

I now have to work out how to fix this mess of a garden...

Can anyone advise how best to install some sort of sleeper or divide between the lawn and patio?
(After I have clean up the area of course...)

Posts

  • LynLyn Posts: 23,190
    Have they taken away your top soil scraping off the top? 
    Do you need a sleeper, you can bring the lawn up to the patio or make a little flower border. 
    Gardening on the wild, windy west side of Dartmoor. 

  • KT53KT53 Posts: 9,016
    I assume you plan to use sleepers to hold back the earth at the higher level where the paving slabs are laying in the photo.
    When we had ours done, they levelled and consolidated the ground where the sleepers were going to stand, put the sleepers on edge, drilled down through them and drove 3/4 inch diameter reinforcing rods through the sleepers and about 18 inches into the ground.  That has stayed solid since.
  • Thanks for the responses guys.
    In my mind I do plan to use Sleepers to divide the Lawn from the Patio area...
    Even the edges have been left untidy so plan to clean up a lot of it before doing the proper work.  My wife has said that apparently using different sizes of slabs helps reduce the cutting to fit in tight areas.
  • Lizzie27Lizzie27 Posts: 12,494
    If the slope is not very high, you can just hammer in wooden stakes behind the sleepers and then screw the sleepers to them and infill any gaps behind with top soil. Up to two sleepers high would be okay, any more might need the procedure outlined by KT53.
    North East Somerset - Clay soil over limestone
  • hogweedhogweed Posts: 4,053
    Has the photo been swapped? I can only see earth out the door - no slabs or patio or lawn!
    'Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement' - Helen Keller
  • No this is how the workers left me garden after taking up the Slabs that were my path around the garden.
    Currently we cannot reach the lawn at the back of the garden without walking through the hole in the ground.
    Which has upset my wife as this was intended to improve the garden for my 20 month old daughter...
  • Nanny BeachNanny Beach Posts: 8,719
    We used "proper" old railway sleepers, there was no need to anchor them to the ground they are so heavy, took 3 men to lift them, they aint going anywhere.  I hope you didnt pay these builders before they took off on their horses! Could we have some pics of the rest of the garden.  I know its upsetting, we had HUGE incident exactly this time last year, with new gutters,soffits,barge boards, re-build of conservatory, at the same time, discovered a growth on my back, so it was multiple DR,consultants, operation,THEN Hubby got a kidney stone stuck, Dr.s consultants, operation, I couldnt cope with the building work, should have complained more, but didnt have the energy.
  • NewBoy2NewBoy2 Posts: 1,813
    Suggest you try one letter to the "builders " threatening the Small Claims Court and in your letter say....." would like this rectified to our satisfaction before we have to refer it to other parties ".
    This means threatening to take them to court.
    If you have a friend who is a Solicitor they will draft the letter for you for a "few beers ".

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegitimi_non_carborundum
    Everyone is just trying to be Happy.....So lets help Them.
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