Landscaping in Solihull, priced in writing before anything starts.
Landscaping in Solihull is governed by one rule more than any other, and it is stricter than most people realise.
Any tree in a conservation area over 75 millimetres in diameter, measured at 1.5 metres above the ground, is automatically protected. Seventy five millimetres is about three inches. That is not a mature specimen, it is a tree somebody planted fifteen years ago, and it means a great deal more of the planting on a Solihull plot is protected than the owner generally assumes. No cutting, removal, damage or destruction is allowed without prior notification to the council, and wilful destruction of a protected tree without consent is a criminal offence carrying a maximum fine of £20,000.
We check before anything is quoted for removal, every time, and we would far rather redesign a layout around a tree than put a client in front of that fine.
Root protection areas are the practical extension of the same point. They reach further than the canopy, and a patio, a base or a retaining wall built through one can kill a tree slowly enough that nobody connects the two for five years. We set layouts around roots and build hard surfaces near trees in ways the roots can live with.
Garden buildings in the Green Belt are a separate question, since outbuildings out there are looked at more closely than they would be in town. Our landscaping page shows the range of the work.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our landscaping page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Solihull street to the next.
Getting plant to the working area without tracking across a root protection area is the recurring challenge on these plots. Where the route is unavoidable we use ground protection boards rather than compacting the soil over a protected root system.
Front hard surfacing over five square metres needs a permeable material or drainage to a soft area within your boundary, or planning permission. In the affected part of Olton the Article 4 direction may require permission regardless.
Leaf fall should shape the design on a wooded plot. Gravel under a heavy canopy becomes a raking job forever and a gully without a leaf guard blocks every autumn.
The notification process for work to a protected tree carries a six week period, and that is programme time rather than paperwork. We build it into the schedule so the garden is not left half finished waiting on a letter.
Part of our wider building work in Solihull.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
