I believe that all too often, landscapers miss out on so many opportunities to gain projects that they either do not consider, or feel unqualified to undertake. Many of these opportunities may be found in the world of ‘Building’. Perhaps because I have worked on so many sites, and my passion is for the restoration of gardens, in which I include garden buildings, as these are as much part of the ‘garden’ as are walls, paths and steps. Much of my work is in the restoration of flint walls, natural stone features and outbuildings – if you are able to build hard landscape projects, restoration is only a natural extension to that ability – and I find a great and ready market where I fill a niche between ‘Builders’ and ‘Odd Jobbers’. The first would not wish to get involved in fiddly works, and the second may not have the imagination that we have as designers and landscapers.
This particular project is only a very small part of a much larger scheme I have been working on, job at a time, two or three jobs per year, some wet weather, some all weather, over the past four years – with several years of potential work pencilled in at any one time. The property is an old farm, with several outbuildings and boundary walls, all in need of attention as time and funds permit.
The brief was to convert an old cow shed, three walls of natural sandstone with brick quoins and a clay tile roof, into an outdoor room, complete with log burning stove and reclaimed brick floor. First of all, I replaced several ‘missing’ stones and repointed the three walls, on both sides, effectively rebuilding the structure – working on the existing foundations (if there were any, the building was around two hundred years old).
The inside of the roof space was pretty grim – tiles with wooden tile pegs, with patches of roofing felt, all weather proof, but looking anything but attractive. I came up with the idea of cladding the interior spaces between the rafters with reed matting, which was cut to shape with a pair of large scissors and held in position with lengths of green hazel, simply ‘hammered’ into place. This proved to be very successful, and not one of the hazel strips – or the reed matting – has come loose since the work was completed (2011) despite some very warm weather and the log burning stove creating a fair amount of heat/drying out of materials.
All you need is your designers eye and craftsman’s skills to create all manner of interesting works that you may consider outside your Landscapers remit. You could, of course, adapt this technique to a newer building, even a modern wooden shed!
