Landscaping in Banbury, priced in writing before anything starts.
Landscaping around Banbury is dominated by walls, because in this part of Oxfordshire the boundary is usually stone rather than fence panel.
Those walls come in two kinds and they are not interchangeable. Dry stone walls are built without mortar and rely entirely on how the stones are placed, with through stones tying the two faces together and a coping locking the top. Rebuilding one properly is a craft, and a dry stone wall repaired with a bucket of mortar and some face stones will bulge and fail again within a few years, usually worse than before. Lime bedded stone walls are different again and want a lime repair rather than cement.
Either way, a stone wall is the most conspicuous thing in a garden here and the thing most likely to be covered by a conservation area designation. We check before altering one and we rebuild in kind rather than in the quickest available method.
Ironstone also makes an excellent paving and edging material and it is local, which means a terrace built from it sits with the building instead of arguing with it.
The national rule on front hard surfacing applies: more than five square metres needs a permeable material or drainage to a soft area within your boundary, or planning permission. 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 Cherwell District 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 Banbury street to the next.
Every tree in a conservation area is protected whether or not an order exists, which means six weeks written notice to the district before even a heavy prune, and with 60 conservation areas across Cherwell that catches a great deal of village planting.
Stone is heavy and village lanes are narrow. We size deliveries to what can actually reach the plot and we do not park an artic on a single track lane and hope, because in these villages that is how you fall out with everybody at once.
Levels and retaining structures are designed and drained rather than stacked, and on the sloping ground around the town that comes up more often than it does on flat sites.
Stone walling is a slow trade and an honest one. We give you a realistic expectation for wall repair rather than a fixed price plucked out of the air, because until a wall is opened up nobody can say how much of it is genuinely sound.
Part of our wider building work in Banbury.
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.
