Garden Renovations in Manchester

Manchester’s southern edge runs along the River Mersey, and the land at Didsbury, Northenden and Chorlton is flat and low, with flood meadows either side of the river around Chorlton Ees.

Gardens on that side of the city are often working with very little natural fall and a water table closer to the surface than most.

That is a different problem from an inner-suburb yard, where the ground has usually been made up over the years and the fall runs the wrong way.

Both arrive at the same place: water needs somewhere to go before a surface goes down. On a low, flat plot that means building the falls in deliberately and putting in a drainage route rather than trusting gravity to sort it out.

On a made-up plot it usually means digging out further than expected to reach something that will not move again.

It is also why a renovation is quoted after a site visit rather than from a photograph. What is under the surface decides most of the work and most of the programme, and there is no honest way to read that from the kerb.

Many inner-Manchester terraces are reached at the back by a ginnel or a shared entry rather than a side gate, and a renovation has to be planned around that.

Plant, hardcore, paving and spoil all travel the same narrow route — sometimes through the house — so the running order of the work matters as much as the design does.

Further out, in Didsbury, Withington, Burnage, Chorlton and Whalley Range, there are more side gates and drives and the job runs more conventionally.

We cover the city’s suburbs across the board: Chorlton, Whalley Range, Withington, Fallowfield, Rusholme, Levenshulme, Burnage, Didsbury, Northenden and Wythenshawe to the south; Ancoats, Hulme, Moss Side and Longsight closer in; and Gorton, Openshaw, Newton Heath, Moston, Blackley, Crumpsall and Cheetham Hill to the east and north.

Salford sits across the Irwell, Stretford and Sale across the Trafford boundary, Stockport to the south-east and Prestwich to the north.

The A6, the A34 Kingsway, the A56 and Princess Parkway all run out of the centre, with the M60 round the outside and our base in Bolton, Greater Manchester, about eleven miles to the north-west.