We have been working on a garden in Warwick Bridge (near Carlisle) with a beck that flows into the River Eden catchment area and comes under environmental restrictions. An historic mill race divides the sloping garden in two and had made the space difficult to use in the past.
Our design created a new look to the river banks, a new seating area and a banked rockery up to the house. All to improve bank security and also create a more safe and usable space. However, the work involved to implement the design was not straightforward. The new design and the methods chosen for construction had to be approved by the Environment Agency. A temporary dam was built to protect the river from the construction work. Once in place, the banks could be excavated to create a new stone-faced wall. An awful lot of ‘silty’ water was pumped and filtered to keep the beck clean. Finally , a new footbridge was constructed to connect the two halves of the garden.
Then, once all the hard landscaping was in place, the planting focused on native flowers and a naturalistic scheme.
“This was a project where our experience really made a difference. We knew which solutions would be feasible in this type of garden. We could also ensure that the original design drawings included all the information that the Environment Agency needed, and the detailed planning meant we could price the job accurately so that the client had no nasty surprises.”