Today I’m writing about some of the re-modelling we did in our front garden. This first job was to build a giant planting bed for shrubs and flowers alongside the fence. This was a huge project and we made so many mistakes during it that I’m really excited to share the information with anyone thinking to do the same. Unfortunately, this was done way before I considered starting a blog so there aren’t as many pictures of the step by step as I’d like. Where pictures aren’t available I will try to explain or draw diagrams to make it clearer.
THE PLAN
When we moved in, the garden was essentially a patch of grass surrounded by trees and shrubs all the way around – by the fence but also by the driveway. It was a lovely, well looked after bit of greenery but it was nothing like how I always pictured my front garden would be.
I wanted a nice open driveway, purely because of my tendency to ding things when I reverse. I also wanted to have a garden that flowered in the spring and summer and died back during the winter. There’s something about seeing fresh blooms and greenery in the spring that just feels very homey. A lot of the trees already planted were evergreen.
Because of all this, I knew several jobs needed to be done to get the garden to the state where it would be perfect, including:
- Clear everything growing currently (covered in this post)
- Change the fences
- Extend the gate
- Extend the driveway
- Build a flower bed running alongside the fence at the front and left (covered in this post)
- Plant the flowers
- Lay the to-be grass patch with driveway grids for occasional grass parking
- Seed the new grass patch
Everything has now been done and it has taken a couple of years to get here. The only thing we will still do is replace our current tarmac driveway with block paving at some point in the next 5-10 years. I will do separate posts on some of these topics so keep an eye out if you’re interested!
I will cover a few of these jobs in this post but the tools and material below only relate to the actual building of the flower bed.
MATERIALS & TOOLS REQUIRED
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Materials
Tools
- Shovel
- Rake
- Metal wheelbarrow
- Cementing trowel
- String
- Bamboo sticks
- Measuring tape
- Bolster chisel
- Plastering trowel
- Paint brush
- Level
- Drill
- Circular hole cutting drill bit
- 25mm masonry drill bit
STEP 1: CLEARING EXISTING GROWTH
The first job in a very long list of jobs was to simply dig up absolutely everything that was there. This took ages as a lot of the plants were very well established trees. At this stage, we left the old grass alone as it wasn’t in the way of the flower bed and it’s nicer to walk on grass than mud.
How to remove a small-medium garden tree with no power tools
As part of this task, we had to remove a number of medium-sized trees and shrubs, some of which had very deep roots. After doing this many times over, here is the method I find works best for me.
- Cut the tree down from the top using large secateurs and a small saw to leave a stem big enough to grasp and pull sticking out of the ground
- Use a shovel to dig around the base of the tree to expose the roots as much as possible
- Once the root system is a bit visible, use a heavy breaker bar and ram it underneath the tree right into the midst of the root system as hard as you can
- Push, pull and use leverage by placing a rock or wood underneath the bar to wriggle the tree around
- If possible, cut through some tree roots to make it easier
- Keep driving the breaker bar as deep as you can every time it slips out or you feel that you made progress loosening the tree
- You can use a shovel and a gardening fork to help
- Eventually, the tree stem and the biggest part of the root system will come loose. Now you need to pull out as many of the roots still in the ground as possible. Use your shovel and fork to do this
STEP 2: MEASURING OUT THE FLOWER BED
To measure out where the flower bed will go, you can use string and a few bamboo sticks or any other scrap you can stick in the ground and tie the string to.
We used bamboo and stuck it in the ground where the bed start, end and corners would be. We then tied a string and ran it from stick to stick. This gave us an outline of where the bed walls will run. This is really helpful for making sure that when you’re laying your bricks, they are running straight.
Because our bed was continuous and ran alongside our fence which has concrete panels at the bottom, we didn’t need to build the back of it. All we did is start our blocking from one concrete fence post and finished it at another concrete fence post. The concrete panels below the wooden fence hold our earth in, however, we did add a second concrete panel to raise the level to which we could fill the bed. If you have a wooden fence, I would recommend building the bed in full as wood will eventually rot away and it will be difficult to change the fence with so much dirt pushing on it from inside the bed.
STEP 3: LAYING A FOOTING
Measuring out the footing sizing
A footing is required so that the first row of blocks can be attached to a firm, level surface. In case you’ve never seen concrete footings before, it is literally just a trench dug in the ground that gets filled level with concrete.
We dug it all along where our string ran, from one end of the bed to the other. We dug it about 15cm deep, which I think is the minimum depth of footing you can have for it to do its job. We also dug it wider than our blocks, roughly 5-10cm wider on each side of the block. I think because our bed was only 2 blocks high this was ok but if you’re planning on making your bed higher, I would suggest 10cm on each side as a minimum.
At this point we had a decision to make – our garden slightly slopes towards the house. So we could have either built the bed to match the slope or we could have it perfectly level and essentially you would see 2 full blocks on the end of the bed by the house and 1 and a bit of block at the top end of the garden because the rest would be buried to make the bed level. I decided the first option would be better and I’m pleased with how it looks – it’s much more natural and fits in with the fence perfectly. This did mean that our footing for this sloping section needed to be slightly sloped too. We didn’t do anything special for this – we just kept measuring 15cm depth from the soil surface and this naturally made the footing slope.
Filling the footings with concrete
We used sharp sand and cement at a ratio of 5:1 and we mixed it in our metal wheelbarrow. The easiest way to measure it out is to count shovelfuls: you take 5 shovelfuls of sharp sand and 1 shovelful of cement. We mixed it while it was dry using a rake as this really helped the sand and cement to mix together. Then we added the water bit by bit and mixed using our shovel until it looked the right consistency. Consistency wise, you want it a bit pourable but not too liquid.
We then filled in the footing by emptying the wheelbarrow into the footing trench, trowelled the top to make it smooth and left it alone to dry for a whole week.
STEP 4: BUILDING THE FLOWER BED WALLS
Laying the blocks
After the footings were set it was time to actually build the bed. We were planning to only go two blocks up so we started at one end and built both levels as we went.
To start building, we mixed the building sand with cement at a ratio of 4:1 which means 4 shovels of building sand to one shovel of cement. We again used our trusty metal wheelbarrow, rake and shovel. A quick tip on this part – make sure that you don’t mix too much at once as it does start to go off fairly quickly, especially if the temperature is warm.
Then we simply applied this to a block on the left, right and bottom using a cement trowel and put the block in place. We used a small level to make sure it was ok, checked it against our tied sting and we did make sure that we were slightly sloping the right amount too. The sloping part we pretty much did by eye, there was no science used there at all.
We made sure to stagger the top row of blocks compared to the bottom so that the joins in between blocks were not sat right on top of each other. In hindsight, the first error we made was not staggering them enough – the joins of the bottom row should be around in the centre of each block on the top row. Ours only stagger slightly as you can see in the image below.
How to cut blocks down using a hammer and chisel
To get around corners we had to cut the blocks to size. This is actually really simple and you don’t require power tools to do it. Here are the steps:
- Measure and mark where the block needs to be cut
- Lay it on a hard surface
- Use a bolster chisel and place it on your mark
- Hold it straight and use a hammer to gently knock it
- You’re aiming to make only a small indent
- Do this all the way around the cut
- Then return to your starting place and hit the chisel in harder until the block splits
- It should be split by your indented line. It may be a bit jagged but it will do the job
STEP 5: RENDERING THE BED
After we built the structure of the bed, it was time to render it to cover the blocks and get a nice smooth finish.
We mixed the render in the same way as the concrete using our wheelbarrow, rake and shovel but we used a 6:1 mix of rendering sand to cement. This part here is where we made our second, third, fourth and fifth mistakes (yes, it was bad). Based on some old school information, we used washing up liquid instead of adding a proper render plasticiser. A plasticiser makes the mixture much smoother and easier to work with which is really important when rendering.
Render is applied in two coats: the scratch coat and the top coat. Normally, you wet the wall and slap on the scratch coat without smoothing it much at all, let it dry, scratch it up and then apply the top coat smoothing it to a nice finish. This is what we did, however, afterwards, I read that you are actually supposed to mix the scratch coat as 4:1 or 5:1 and the top coat as 6:1. I think the idea is that each subsequent coat is weaker than the previous one. We used a mix of 6:1 for both layers.
Another mistake here was how much we worked the plaster. All the tutorials we watched specifically highlighted that you shouldn’t play with the render, even on your top coat. You slap it on and smooth it once or twice and that’s it. You shouldn’t keep going back and forth on it. However, because our render was proving very difficult to work with, we kept having to keep going over it.
And finally, another mistake was that we didn’t add any sort of metal edge beads along the edges of the blocks. We weren’t looking for a perfectly sharp, straight edge so thought it’d look ok if we just slapped it on by hand. Let me tell you, we were wrong. The edges were very messy – you couldn’t even call them rustic!
As a result, the final finish on the bed was not that great. It was kind of lumpy in some places and a little cracked in others when it dried. It seemed to be holding though so we left it and carried on with the project.
If I was to do this again, I would make absolutely sure that I do the following:
- Attach edging beads where clean edges are required
- Mix the scratch coat at a ratio of 4:1 of rendering sand to cement and add a proper plasticiser following the manufacturer’s instructions
- Once dry, scratch up the first coat real good
- Mix the top coat at a ratio of 5:1 of rendering sand to cement and add a proper plasticiser following the manufacturer’s instructions
- While applying this, I would not play with the render at all but smooth it in one or two big strokes
- I would then leave it alone to dry
Spoiler alert: the flower bed is no longer rendered. Keep reading to find out why.
STEP 6: FILLING THE BED
After the render had dried we actually went ahead and filled the flower bed with top soil most of the way. This took about 4 tonnes and we had it delivered in a big truck and just dumped on the drive – it was cheaper than buying it in bulk bags. We had to use a shovel to wheelbarrow it in. It actually didn’t take as long as you’d think. The soil was nice and fluffy so it was quite easy to dig through it.
STEP 7: DECORATING
At this stage, I thought the bed was basically ready for planting. It was nearing winter so I knew I had to wait until spring to start putting plants in but I wanted to fully finish the bed before the bad weather started. To decorate the bed, we attached decking boards all the way across the top of the flower bed. The idea behind this was to:
- Add a pop of colour as at this stage I had painted our fences a willowy green sort of colour and knew that the flower bed would be an off-white colour
- Hide our poor edge rendering job
We used masonry screws to screw the deck boards down and painted them using the same stain I used on the fences as I have some leftover.
I then painted the bed using a generic off-white masonry paint from my local DIY store. In spite of the rendering setbacks, it actually looked really good when it was finished. I was really looking forward to planting everything I planned the following spring. And then… British rain and frost hit.
STEP 8: ADDING DRAINAGE
When the weather deteriorated into winter, it became obvious really quickly that the flower bed was not going to hold up in its current state.
When we first built it, because it was only two blocks high, we didn’t consider drainage at all. We thought it was low enough for the rain to just seep quickly into the ground. And to be fair this may have been true if the bed was built on a flat surface. However, because of the slope in our front garden, we were finding that part of the bed which is right by the front fence (where the slope is highest and is running towards the bed wall), would just not dry. Every time it rained or froze and thawed, the water would run forward to the wall too quickly instead of running straight down. It would then take ages to dry because the paint I used was one of those waterproof masonry paints that don’t let the water through. Essentially, this part of the flower bed was behaving as a retaining wall without proper drainage.
The other side of the bed didn’t have issues due to the slope because it was running down it. However, the freezing and thawing was leaving the wall soaked because the water couldn’t escape through the paint.
To summarise, these were the issues I could identify:
- No drainage
- Poor rendering job
- Non-breathable paint
By the end of the winter, most of the paint had peeled off and the remainder was annoying me so I used a scraper to remove it. At this stage, it looked as though the plaster was still staying on so we decided to add some drainage and see how we get on.
How to add drainage to a retaining wall
As you can see, the soil should only touch the wall at the very top. Instead, behind the wall, there is a gravel filled trench that harbours a perforated pipe. This perforated pipe gets put in with holes at the bottom and water rises up into the pipe. After this, the water is supposed to flow along the pipe and out of a small vent installed in the wall. The pipe should slope downwards towards the vent slightly to encourage the draining. Additionally, small weep vents can be installed to catch any excess water and allow air in to circulate and dry the wall.
This is how we did it:
- Dug a trench about 15cm wide right behind the wall which went a bit lower than the start of the blocks
- Laid weed proofing fabric that has been folded a few times in the trench so that it covered all the sides and there was enough hangover to fold it over the top too but we left this out of the way at the moment. This is required to stop soil getting into the pipe and blocking the holes
- Added a thin layer of gravel along the bottom of the trench, trying to create a small slope. Forcing a slope was only necessary for the retaining wall part of the flower bed because the other wall was already sloped
- Laid a perforated pipe along the whole wall on top of the gravel. We made sure that the holes in the pipe are on the floor, not the top
- At the bottom of the slope where the wall ends we drilled a large circular hole for a vent and made sure the pipe end was slotted into the hole a bit but not all the way
- Used a 25mm masonry drill bit to drill holes roughly every 30-40cm along the wall. They were slightly above the perforated pipe level as these are here just in case. I think usually if you use the perforated pipe method then these aren’t required but I wasn’t taking any chances after we messed up the first time. We popped in the weep vents
- Filled the trench up with gravel to about 5cm off where we wanted the soil level to be
- Folded the hangover of the weed proofing fabric over the top of the gravel and added about 5cm of soil over the top to hide the trench
- Attached a vent over the large drilled vent hole
This does sound like a lot of work, and it was, but we still managed it in a day so it’s really not as bad as it sounds.
STEP 9: REMOVING RENDER
After the drainage was installed, visibly we could tell that the wall was drying much quicker. I decided to fix up some of the plaster patches that I accidentally knocked off when I scraped the paint off but when I looked closer, I found that some of the plaster was barely hanging on at all. This was the last straw really – I grabbed my trusty chisel and hammer and knocked the whole lot off.
Removing render that is loose is really easy. You can lightly tap it with a hammer which will make a whole patch fall off. Then you can use a scraper to get under bits that are still attached.
The job is a lot more difficult when the render is attached like it’s supposed to be. About half of the wall was like this. To remove the firmly attached render, I had to use a chisel, a large flat screwdriver and a hammer to try and knock pieces of render off without damaging the blocks underneath. This was a really slow process because you can only take tiny pieces at a time.
In the end, I did manage to remove it all but there were a few dents in the blocks for sure.
As we had such a rubbish time rendering the wall in the first place, I decided to leave it and just paint it with a good quality breathable masonry paint. Finding one of these was surprisingly hard – it turns out regular DIY stores sell waterproof masonry paint only. No idea why because in my experience it’s rubbish!
I found this website that had what I was after and I got a primer and a 5L pot of paint from them. They were a lot more expensive than I’d have liked but I still have about half of both left so when the paint chips off eventually, I can use them to touch it up.
STEP 10: PLANTING
Finally, after two summers of jobs, I was able to finally plant things in the flower bed. I went with shrub roses at the front of the house as they are supposed to eventually grow to 6ft and block off view from the footpath. Along the side, we installed trellises to increase the height of the fences (a story for another time) and I planted some clematis plants to climb up these. I also added some berries like strawberries, mini blueberries, raspberries and a white currant bush.
THE RESULT
I do love the final result and I feel like we learned so much trying to make this happen that it was definitely worth the hassle even just for the educational side of it. I’m happy to report that the paint over wintered wonderfully, it still looks as good as when I first painted it so the extra cost was definitely worth it.
TIPS BASED ON OUR EXPERIENCE
This is a really long post so I wanted to summarise the key mistakes we made so that you can avoid them if you embark on a project like this.
- Make sure to stagger your blocks/ bricks so that each block sits on top of a join of two blocks on the row below
- Consider whether your plant bed will need drainage. If so, consider using the perforated pipe method for running the water off to a vent
- If you choose to render your flower bed, make sure to use proper sand to concrete ratios and use a proper plasticiser. Do not overwork the plaster
- Use a good quality breathable masonry paint instead of the modern waterproof ones
