Landscaping in Kenilworth, priced in writing before anything starts.
Landscaping in Kenilworth is, more than anywhere else we work, a conversation about trees.
The Victorian and Edwardian plots around Avenue Road were laid out with room for planting and that planting is now a hundred years old and inside a conservation area, which means every tree on it is protected whether or not a specific order exists. Six weeks written notice to the district is required before even a heavy prune, and removing a protected tree is a criminal offence with a fine that can exceed the cost of the whole garden.
The practical consequence goes further than not felling things. Root protection areas extend a long way, often further than the canopy, and a patio, a base or a retaining wall built through them can damage a tree slowly enough that nobody connects the two for five years. On these plots we set the layout around the roots rather than around the drawing, and where a hard surface has to go near a tree we build it in a way the roots can live with.
The national rule on front hard surfacing applies: more than five square metres needs a permeable material or drainage to a soft area inside your boundary, or planning permission. In the conservation area expect further control, including on the front boundary itself.
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 Warwick 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 Kenilworth street to the next.
Access on a villa plot is usually genuinely good, with a drive and a side gate, which means a machine can reach the garden and the job costs less than the same garden on a tight plot. It is one of the few places where the quotation is pleasantly straightforward.
At the castle end the reverse applies: narrow plots, no side access and everything carried through the house. We size deliveries to what can actually be moved rather than to what is convenient to order.
Leaf fall is the fact of life on these plots and it should shape the design. Gravel under a mature canopy becomes a raking job forever, a lawn in heavy shade will never thicken up whatever you feed it, and a drain without a leaf guard will block every autumn. We design for what the trees actually do rather than for how the garden looks in June.
Part of our wider building work in Kenilworth.
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.
