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Building Rundale Barn - Part 2

In this blog we're back at Rundale Barn, this time to look at some of the patio and building work we've done there.

The first job was to shape the existing lawn area, dig out the ground and prepare it for the new patio, pathways and flower beds that will make up the structure of the new gardens. This involved removing some existing structures, such as the wooden children's play area.

We had to dig out a total of 80 tons of soil. Scalpings were then laid and compacted using a large wacker plate before adding the cobbled edging to mark the new boundary. The patio could now be laid on a full bed of cement.

The new patio is complete, complete with a bespoke circular motif and dedicated planting space for the ornamental shrubs.

Next is the covered entertainment area. This started off as a timber frame structure extending from the main building onto the patio.

The tiled roof is added and connected to the main building. Proper footings finish off the supoorts, making them more secure and giving a much more solid look.

This section of work was completed with the addition of a cedar-framed greenhouse on the adjacent outbuilding featured in our previous blog post about Rundale Barn.

Once the construction of the patio, greenhouse and covered area is complete, we can begin the extensive planting. Here is an example of the planting that has been done around the new stone fountain on the edge of the lawn.

This is just the start of the work at Rundale, which also required further building work and construction of an access road. As the year 2011 ended we started another phase to the garden which consisted of tree surgery and clearing of a scrub area. The idea behind this is to utilize the area for fruit trees and sow a wild meadow lawn. "I'm hopeful this should create a beautiful display of colour."

Building Rundale Barn - Part 1

Hello once again. It's time to go back through the PMG photo album and highlight some of our previous work. This time we'll make the first visit of many to one of our most extensive projects: Rundale Barn in Cromhall nr Thornbury.

Rundale Barn is an impressive property with two acres of landscaped gardens. The owner Howard Marshall wanted to extensively develop the grounds utilizing many of PMG specialities. We've already featured pictures from some of our work at Rundale Barn in our galleries, but here we'll take a look at the basic steps in the process so far.

A new stone outbuilding was required to sit alongside the existing buildings, in a space previously occupied by some open ground and a somewhat damaged stone wall. So the first job was to demolish existing stone wall and dig out footings.

Once the foundations had been laid, in this case a concrete floor within the existing walls, we could go on to build the breeze-block structure. This makes up the shell of the outbuilding and isn't visible from outside. Instead a more attractive stone wall was built around the structural breeze-block shape.

With the structure of the building complete, we then started constructing the roof. The joists and trestles go on first, with the waterproof membrane going over the roof structure. Last it's the cedar shingle roof tiles, which look rather vivid at this early stage, but have subsequently weathered in to match the rest of the building work.

And the outbuilding is complete. This project took 10 weeks to complete from start to finish. This seems a long process, but we did re-build the neighbours stone wall and dug out 100 tons of soil.

With the building's construction complete, lots of planting has been done to soften the hard landscaping. The large border adjacent to the outbuilding has a blue and yellow theme, using Herbaceous plants.

In the next post about Rundale Barn we'll be looking at the patio and entertainment area.