Indian Fossil Sandstone Patio on a Sloping Garden, Hereford

Project: 40m² hand cut sandstone patio with a softwood sleeper retaining frame Location: Hereford Duration: 2 weeks, September

The brief

The garden ran off from the side of the client’s log cabin on a slope that wasn’t much use to anyone, there was nowhere flat to put a table and nowhere you’d want to sit out on an evening. What they were after was a proper terrace coming off the cabin, somewhere level that looked like it had always been part of the garden rather than something dropped in afterwards.

Across 3 metres there was a 40cm drop off, which doesn’t sound like a great deal until you’re trying to get 40m² of stone sitting dead level on it.

What we had to work around

A digger couldn’t be used on this one due to the ground condition, and there was a protected ash tree in the area as well, so the whole dig out was done by hand and kept careful around the root zone. That’s slower and it costs more in labour than bringing a machine in, but with a protected tree on site it’s the only sensible way to go about it and it’s not worth taking a chance on.

The other thing we had to allow for was correct ventilation under the log cabin. A timber building needs air moving underneath it, and if you build a patio up tight against one you choke that airflow off and you’ll end up with problems in the timber a few years down the line. Holding our finished level low enough to keep that ventilation clear, while still getting a flat usable terrace out of a slope that was working against us, was the part of this job that took the most thinking about, and it was a challenge to get right.

The build

The terrace is framed in softwood sleepers, 2.4m lengths at 20 x 20cm, laid two courses high, which gave us 40cm of retained height and lined up well with the fall we were dealing with. They’re supported on rebar driven down through the timbers into the ground beneath, which pins the whole frame and stops the courses shifting under load once the ground gets wet and the patio starts getting used.

Everything came out by hand and was barrowed off, then the formation was checked over and compacted before any of the base went back in. With no machine on site this was where the bulk of the two weeks went.

For the paving we used Indian Fossil sandstone, hand cut and laid in a four size pattern. Fossil suits a garden like this because it’s a warm buff stone with plenty of variation running through it, and a hand cut edge sits far better alongside timber sleepers than a sawn calibrated stone would, while the four size pattern keeps it looking natural instead of gridded out.

Every slab went down on a full cement bed with an SBR slurry backing brushed onto the back of it before it was laid, so there’s no spot bedding and no voids anywhere underneath. That’s what stops slabs lifting or rocking on you a couple of winters later, and on a patio that’s holding a level against a slope it matters even more. The joints were all hand pointed using a resin jointing compound, which gives a clean finish and stands up to being brushed and washed down without washing out.

How it turned out

Two weeks on site and the client has a level terrace running off the cabin, framed in sleepers, that reads as part of the garden rather than something sat on top of it.

They were good enough to say afterwards that they had no idea it would turn out as well as it did, and they were pleased not just with the finished patio but with the fact they’d taken our advice on how the project should be approached. On a sloping garden with a protected tree and a timber building both in play, the quick answers are usually the wrong ones, and they trusted us to do it the way it needed doing.

Thinking about a patio on a sloping garden?

A slope isn’t a problem in itself, it just means the job needs planning properly before anybody picks up a spade. If you’ve got a garden you can’t make use of, or a building you need to work around, give us a call and we’ll come and have a look at it for you.