Landscaping in Coventry, priced in writing before anything starts.
Coventry gardens split the same way the houses do. On the interwar and post-war estates there is usually room to work, side access and a reasonable plot. On the Victorian terraces the garden is narrow, walled on both sides, and reachable only through the house or over a fence.
That second case is the one that decides the price. Every tonne of aggregate and every slab is carried, not barrowed round the side, and a job that would take four days on an estate house takes considerably longer on a terrace. We would rather explain that with a quotation in hand than have it appear later as a variation.
On front gardens there is a national rule that catches people constantly. Laying more than five square metres of hard surfacing to the front of a house needs either a permeable material or a way of draining the run off to a soft area inside your own boundary. Do neither and it needs planning permission. It is easy to design around when it is known about at the start and awkward to unpick afterwards. Where the frontage is in a conservation area or under an Article 4 direction there may be further control on top of that, including on the boundary wall.
Retaining walls are structure, not decoration. Anything holding back a real change in level gets designed and drained rather than stacked. 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 Coventry City 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 Coventry street to the next.
Landscaping moves more material than anything except groundworks. Where there is no rear access we protect a route through the house and plan deliveries in quantities that can actually be carried through it. This is the trade where the difference between a plot with side access and one without shows up most starkly, which is why we will not price a Coventry garden from photographs.
Before any tree comes out, check whether it is protected. Coventry has a large number of preservation orders, and every tree inside a conservation area is protected regardless of whether an order exists, which means six weeks written notice to the council before so much as a heavy prune. Taking down a protected tree is a criminal offence with a fine that can run well past the cost of the whole garden. We check first, every time, and we would rather design around a tree than lose one.
Part of our wider building work in Coventry.
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.
