Baskets

In addition to levelling the garden, as much as possible, the contractor will also be digging out a car parking space alongside our garage. As with the courtyard, this area adjoins the garden which is at a level 2m higher, so a retaining structure needs to be built.

At the start of the project our architect and structural engineer assumed we would be extending the concrete retaining wall to do this, but cost and our desire to avoid using too much new concrete and steel meant we haven't. Instead we'll be using baskets.

Not just any old baskets - but gabions, more usually seen retaining slopes alongside motorway cuttings, although they have sneaked into contemporary RHS Chelsea designs in the last few years. As we need 16 of them, each holding around 1 cubic meter of material, we'll need plenty of fill. We've already amassed a collection of stone, old bricks and pebbles but this won't get us very far so we need more material to act as the structural bulk and to face the front of the baskets.

Pinching an idea from Chelsea (which is suitably apt as we keep finding bottles in the garden that were buried by previous residents of Hillside before refuse collections existed) we'll be using a combination of beer and wine bottles to face some of the gabions. Thankfully we know somebody who owns a pub so won't have to empty all the bottles ourselves! As for the bulk fill, we'll be using old concrete from demolished buildings, the perfect use for recycled aggregate where it won't be seen.