My lockdown project: redesigning your outdoor space

Recent events have meant a lot of people are at home more than before and spending more time in their outside spaces.

Having to entertain children at home has encouraged many of us to turn to grow our own vegetables, whereas others have turned to traditional gardening, to enjoy more outdoor living and bring some colour into their gardens and windowsills.

If you have become more green-fingered during lockdown, this could be the ideal time to think about redesigning your garden to include a few useful paths, raised beds and a paved area to sit and admire your handiwork.

Paving between the raised beds means that you can easily access your plants and vegetable plot, even in wet weather.  Make a point of checking the area through the day to see where you get the most sunlight.  Here you could construct a small area for a table and chairs to enjoy a cup of tea in between spells of gardening. Tobermore Mayfair and Beaufort paving flags will provide beautiful smooth paving options to work with any furniture.

Check out our Paving flags range.

Products used: Natural Standard Flags, Pedesta Charcoal

Walling makes the creation of raised flower and planting beds possible as it provides a strong and long-lasting surround and thanks to the attractive range of walling products available at Tobermore, it can further enhance the attractive appearance of raised beds in an outdoor space.
Raised beds are also easier on your back when it comes to weeding or pruning.

Check out our Walling range

Walling can be very functional in smaller spaces for some extra seating. Build your wall to the required height and add a coping for some extra seating.

Create a raised bed from Tobermore’s Country Stone Walling or Secura Lite.  Combined with coping stone along the top, this will also act as seating, these can be used to grow strawberries, herbs and salad leaves or summer bedding such as trailing lobelia and nasturtiums.

Products used: Secura Lite Heather, Mayfair Flags Sandstone

Some useful tips for growing your own vegetables:

Don’t go overboard – Plan how many of each item you normally use and grow accordingly. In a packet of salad seeds, there is more than enough to keep you going for years.  Sow little and often for a continuous supply.

Think small – Your vegetables don’t need to be grown in a traditional kitchen garden – integrate your vegetable crop into your flower borders and garden pots where space is at a premium.

Don’t take it too seriously – not everything goes to plan so enjoy whatever turns out well. Even a small amount of home-produced veg is a good start

Some tips for planting:

Getting the balance right – It is important to get the balance between hard and soft landscaping in your garden.  Hard landscaping incorporates paving and walling which can be complemented with soft landscaping; planting, grass, hedges and trees. Be sure research plants in advance and select those that are repeat flowering

Size matters – In order to ensure that your planting will be low maintenance, choose varieties of plants which will only reach a size suitable for your garden.  This means you will not have to do a lot of cutting back every year.  In a small garden, you may decide to replace the lawn with artificial grass.

Products used: Tegula Heather, Tegula, Setts and Circle Heather

Tobermore has products and ranges to suit all budgets and project types. View our ranges below:

• Grey paving flags
• Red block paving
• Grey block paving
• Buff paving flags