Reliable Gardening Services Near You in Lewisham

How much of a front garden can be covered in hard surface before permission is needed? The threshold is five square metres. Beyond that, a new impermeable surface between a house and the highway requires planning consent, while a permeable one, or one draining to a border or soakaway inside the boundary, does not. It is a rule that catches out a lot of households in SE13, where terraces and semis with small front plots have been steadily converted to parking over the past few decades.

What counts as permeable in practice

Gravel over a bound sub-base, permeable block paving with open joints, porous asphalt and reinforced grass all satisfy the requirement, provided the layers beneath them drain as well as the surface does. Laying permeable blocks straight onto compacted clay achieves nothing, because the water still has nowhere to go. The alternative route, keeping a conventional surface but falling it into a planted strip or a soakaway within the plot, is often simpler and produces a better-looking frontage.

Why the street notices when a front garden goes

Rainwater that once soaked into a front garden now arrives at the drain within seconds, and enough of that on one street changes how the whole system copes in a downpour. Hard surfaces also store heat and radiate it back into rooms at the front of the house through a summer evening. A frontage that keeps even a metre of planted ground against the bay window behaves noticeably differently from one paved wall to wall.

Bins, bikes and the path people actually walk

Most front gardens fail because they were designed around a car and then asked to store three wheelie bins and a bicycle. Working out the real routes first, then building the layout around them, prevents the usual outcome of a planted bed trampled into a shortcut. Bin storage set against the house rather than the boundary keeps the frontage readable from the street, and a path wide enough for two people passing matters more than its material.

Planting a frontage that faces the wrong way

Terraces on one side of a street face north, and their front gardens sit in the shadow of the house for most of the day, in dry soil against a wall, with salt and grit thrown in during winter. That is a demanding site. Box, yew, sarcococca, euonymus, hardy geraniums and the tougher ferns all cope; bedding and roses do not. On the opposite side, facing full sun with a wall behind, the plant list flips entirely and drought tolerance becomes the first requirement.

Front hedges and the height nobody agrees on

A clipped front hedge does more for a frontage than any fence, but it has to be cut on both faces, including the side overhanging the pavement, and it has to stay clear of sight lines at a driveway entrance. Hedges here are trimmed with a slight batter, wider at the base than the top, so light reaches the whole face and the bottom stays furnished rather than going bare and woody within a few years.

Breaking out an old surface

Lifting concrete or a failed tarmac frontage produces heavy mineral waste that cannot go anywhere near green waste, and duty of care applies to it just as it does to garden arisings. It is loaded separately and taken to a site licensed to receive it. Where a household is clearing the inside of a property at the same time, the two jobs are sequenced so that the frontage is not blocked, with removals team in Hither Green handling what comes out of the house.

What a front garden booking includes

Ongoing frontage upkeep is charged by visit length, while a rebuild is quoted as a project once someone has measured the plot and established what is under the existing surface. Knowing where the water main stopcock and any drainage runs sit saves a great deal of time. Adjoining streets of similar age are covered by professional gardening in Hither Green, weathered paving and wall bases respond to vetted pressure washing in Lewisham rather than to a brush, and the routine visit pattern is described on garden maintenance services nationwide. Rodent activity found behind a bin store belongs with cockroach control services in Lewisham.