Blog Case study
Wilmslow is one of the towns we work in most, and this Burfold Close project is a straightforward example of what a complete garden transformation actually involves once you get past the marketing language: patio installation, landscaping and planting, delivered as one project rather than three separate jobs booked with three separate trades.
The Project
Our client, Mark Lehman, wanted his garden brought up to the same standard as the rest of the property — a proper patio for entertaining, a garden that felt landscaped rather than just maintained, and planting that would give the space structure through the year rather than a few pots dotted around the edges.
Location: Burfold Close, Wilmslow Services: Patio installation, landscaping, planting
What the Transformation Involved
As with every project we take on, the work started with the ground rather than the surface. Cheshire’s clay doesn’t forgive shortcuts, so the patio area was properly excavated and prepared with a compacted sub-base before a single slab went down — the difference between a patio that stays flat for decades and one that starts rocking within a couple of winters.
With the hard landscaping settled, we turned to the softer side of the project: borders reshaped and replanted, and the wider garden brought into line with the new patio so the whole space read as one design rather than a new terrace dropped into an old garden. That sequencing matters — planting a border before the hard landscaping is finished almost always means redoing it once machinery and materials have been moved across the site.
Why Sequencing Decides Whether a Transformation Feels Finished
The difference between a garden that feels like several separate jobs and one that reads as a single, cohesive design almost always comes down to sequencing rather than budget. Starting with groundworks and drainage, moving to hard landscaping once the levels and sub-base are settled, and finishing with planting once there’s no more machinery crossing the site means every stage builds properly on the one before it, rather than being reworked to accommodate whatever comes next. Skip a step or do them out of order, and it shows — a border planted too early gets compacted by wheelbarrow traffic, a patio laid before drainage is finished sits in standing water through its first winter.
The Result
The finished garden gives the household a proper outdoor room: a patio sized for actual entertaining, not just a token slab outside the back door, set within a garden that had been redesigned around it rather than left to catch up. It’s the kind of project that shows up in a five-star review rather than a complaint — precisely because nothing about it was rushed or done out of sequence.
Burfold Close is a good example of why we manage patio, landscaping and planting work as a single project wherever we can. Splitting a garden transformation across separate contractors usually means separate timelines, separate opinions about sequencing, and a garden that takes twice as long to feel finished.
Working to an Existing Property’s Standard
A garden that’s noticeably behind the rest of a well-kept property is a specific brief in itself, different from a genuinely neglected plot or a blank new-build canvas. The existing house, its finishes and its landscaping elsewhere set an implicit standard the new garden has to meet or exceed, which shaped decisions on Burfold Close from paving choice through to how crisply the new borders were edged against the lawn. It’s a brief we see often in established Wilmslow streets like this one, where a garden simply hasn’t kept pace with everything else that’s been updated around it.
Planning Your Own Garden Transformation in Wilmslow?
If your garden needs the same joined-up approach — patio, landscaping and planting designed and built together rather than patched in stages — our full garden makeover service covers exactly this kind of project from first site visit to finished garden. See our patio installation and planting pages for more on each part of the process, or get in touch if you’re in Wilmslow or nearby and ready to talk about your own garden.
