Test…..

Just trying to fine tune the amalgamation of this blog with the Landscape Juice Network so this is a test. (By that I don’t mean it’s a challenge of any sort!)

Quick tip for estimators..

I might be teaching people how to suck eggs here but as I know that other landscapers are reading the blog it seems fair to try to pass on the odd snippett that might be useful.

When I’m putting a quote together I often visit a number of different websites for information, prices, etc. Today is a typical one. The garden I’m quoting has a welded liner for the pool, stainless steel cables over the pergola, a type of brick that we’ve never heard of and various other bits and bobs. I’ve visited perhaps 20 sites for information.

What I do is create a folder in Explorer ‘favorites’ and mark it with the clients name. Then I put all the websites relevent to the job into that folder. That way I have all the salient sites at my finger tips no matter how far into the future it may be before the project starts.

Stratford landscaping project update…

Another beautiful day. A few more of these and I might start to believe that the winter from hell is finally over.

 Our Chipping Campden project is pretty much wrapped up. Alison Heitmann, the designer, has been busy planting the garden over the weekend so I’ll get over and take some photographs in the next few days.

 It also means that all of our attention can go onto the Stratford project which has been designed by Sally Hopkinson. This is a reasonably straight forward build comprising York stone paving around a swimming pool (the paving that arrived yesterday) and a large area of Breedon gravel with York sett edges. There’s also a flight of steps and some other details to attend to.

 The site threw a new challenge at us in the guise of removal of a large iron balcony and staircases. At first glance you’d think this would be very interesting for a salvage yard and I was hopeful that we could get it removed for nothing. Not so. Not one of the local guys we approached was prepared to touch it so in the end we had to pay to have it removed. Once it was down a friend of the clients decided to take it on. Good luck!

 We’re only just beyond the groundworks stage with this one. The dig is finished and the hardcore is in and some of the sett edging is now down.

 I was able to photograph progress on Friday and here’s a small gallery of the going so far with a few ‘befores’ and ‘durings’…

 

No sleep for the wicked!

It’s like Groundhog Day. Here we are at the start of another week and I’m wondering how on earth I failed to post a single word in the last 7 days. My excuse is small and noisy. Daughter, India, seems to have entered a new phase of her campaign to keep Mum and Dad on their toes and now wakes at 4.30am every morning with the sort of wailing that even your average witch doctor would be mighty proud of.

I can confirm that sleep deprivation is one of the best ways of preventing blog posting that I can imagine. The days are spent desperately hanging onto your concentration by consuming industrial quantities of coffee and bought sandwiches. Evenings (ie blog writing time) are just a wreck.

Hopefully India will start a new ‘phase’ sometime soon….!

The culprit... butter wouldn't melt!

 

Prize

I mentioned some time ago that we’d won £1500 worth of stone from CED. Well I was wrong, even better we’d actually won £1500 worth of kit from Probst! I guess most landscapers are kit junkies and Tim is probably up there with the best of them so he had a whale of a time choosing what we wanted from their list. On Friday Nigel Hughes from Probst kindly came down to Stratford and presented Tim with the goods …

Tim (left) and Nigel Hughes with some of our new kit!

We should say here a hearty ‘Thanks Probst’ for their generous sponsorship of the awards. Really appreciated guys!

More York stone…

We had a new load of York stone delivered today and I’m compelled to say that we are now getting some of the best stone we’ve ever had. Not only is it nice and flat with a gently riven surface but it’s not too thick (therefore not too heavy for the guys to lay) and we’ve got a good selection of decent sized pieces. It’s taken a long time for us to find a truly first-class supplier of this stone but we are now  consistently getting a superb product.  I was so impressed I immediately phoned Tim. It might seem slightly odd that after 20 years of using the stuff I still get this level of pleasure out of just looking at a pallet of truly lovely stone but that’s the way it is!