Tips on building flower bed and patio

Wheety

I'm planning my garden redesign in my head at the moment. There's a large area around 12ft x 20ft which I'm going to dig up.

I want to put a long flower bed along the boundary wall. This will be around 2ft by 40-50ft. I was going to use sleepers but the more I think about it, bricks might be more suitable. I'm ok at DIY, is a low (maybe 2ft high) retaining wall something I could manage myself?

The rest of the dug up space will be for a patio. I think I need to dig down around 6" to put in the proper base for this. Will this also do for the wall/flower bed? Can I just dig out the whole area and put down gravel and have the wall on one side and the patio covering the rest? Do I need cement for the patio or can I lay the slabs on sharp sand?

As you can see, I'm looking for as much advice as possible. Are there any good videos/online resources I can look at?

Thank you.

macraignil

Can't tell from your post weather you could manage a low retaining wall.

Proper base is too lose a term to know if it will work for patio and retaining wall.

A wall might need more of a foundation but it depends on traffic over the patio as well. Usually flower beds need different ground conditions to a patio and walls as the material must be loose enough to allow plant roots to grow freely in a flower bed. Gravel might not be much benefit to the plants in the flower bed compared to normal soil. I have seen patio laid on pea gravel or sand on top of hardcore stone. I would normally see kerb stones cemented in place to keep the patio from disintegrating over time. It might be possible to have a solid retaining wall work in the same way. Weeds growing between the patio slabs is more of a problem if they are not pushed together tightly and the ground prepared well underneath.

I got a big DIY book a few years back that has a good section for jobs like what you describe and there are probably a few hundred videos on Youtube about patio and landscaping. The bricks will take longer than the sleepers but if you do a nice job it could look better.

looksee

If you are going to build up soil behind it you will need more than a single brick wall, especially 2ft - 2 ft is very high for a flower bed unless you are specifically building raised beds. If you want it 2 ft for sitting on then you will have to build something more substantial.

Living Off The Splash

I dug out an area about 30' wide and 20' deep. Went down about 6". I then flattened out the clay as best as I could until it was rock solid. Bought about a ton of sand from the Patio Centre in Rochestown Avenue and put about 3" on top of the hard soil. I also bought a couple of ton of the light brown coloured pebbles and put these about 4" deep on top of the sand. I ran an edging of small square blocks around the outside shape of the area, sitting on a good dollop of sand.

I have a section of raised beds in one area 4' X 4' each for vegetable growing in the middle of the gravel with about 12" in between each bed to allow for easy access. Got the raised beds in Aldi in kit form.

I built the whole thing plus another smaller patio at the end of the garden to catch the evening sun for about €600.

Three years on and no problems whatsoever. I give it a rake over every year and hand pick the odd weed that manages to grow there.

If the rain keeps off today I will be planting out some turnip, scallion and suede for September eating. Lettuces already growing well. Potatoes looking good. My spinach has not grown for some reason. Maybe slugs got them or dud packet of seeds.