The Pizza & Olive Patios - Part 20 the garden makeover

Garden transformation Part 20 – Making a patio

There were three seating areas in the garden when we moved here eight years ago.

I really approve of lots of different places to sit in your garden, as it gives you a different perspective. It also encourages you to sit and enjoy, which as a gardener is something you sometimes forget to do.

First area – The Summer-house

The first, was a small area half way down the garden that we are still in the process of turning into a summerhouse.

It’s an ideal spot as it gets the sun most of the day, and early evening.

Second area – The Olive Patio

This second area was directly outside the French doors on the left hand side of the garden. It was very strange indeed! It was a triangle shape, meaning a full sized table and chairs didn’t even fit on it properly.

It did make a very good place to store the many plants we’d brought with us and rescued though!

Stranger still, it was sloping at quite an angle, so anything you put onto the table rolled off.

We ended up putting the table on the grass.

Third area – The Pizza Patio

The third was the largest area, it is on the right-hand side of the garden, in a corner formed by the garden boundary changing direction. There was a crazy paving path leading from the back door and when we arrived it was just big enough to put the swinging hammock and some of the pots that we’d brought.

The Design

As the garden design took shape in my head. All based around the raised vegetable beds in the kitchen garden. I decided to create a good sized patio, connecting the second area and third area together, forming an L-shape.

This was especially important as we were getting rid of all the lawn.

2013 – Discovering the pizza patio

The third area turned out to be substantially bigger once we’d taken out a very overgrown, monster of a conifer. As we started to cut the lower branches off, it exposed inches of decaying pine needles. Once we’d cleared them away, we couldn’t believe how much more space we had.

It was constructed from crazy paving, and it had stood the test of time well, allowing us to use it for a couple more years.

2015 April – The wall is built

By April we had built the Shady wall on one side, which replaced a fence with six foot of growth spilling over. We constructed a raised bed in front of the wall which we filled with Hostas and Ferns that we’d brought with us. This butted up to a raised bamboo bed we’d already built, forming a nice cosy corner.

2015 July – Digging up the crazy paving

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that we took the crazy paving up, although I do believe it’s making a bit of a comeback! Like any fashion though, if you saw it the first time around, you don’t want it the second.

We put crush and run down to form a substantial base then concreted.

We are intending to have a resin coating put on top, but this won’t be done until the house renovations are complete.

In the meantime the concrete provides us with a good base and usable area.

Despite having a north facing boundary this area gets the sun on it from lunchtime until early evening, so it makes sense to be our main eating area.

Another job still on the ‘to do list’, is building an outdoor kitchen space with a ‘pizza oven’, this pizza oven has been on my plan from the start, but again is waiting for the house alterations to be completed.

When will I get my pizza?

2018 – Starting the olive patio

Nothing happened here until the end of 2018. We had been concentrating all of our efforts into the garden. We built the great wall from the house, all the way to the bottom by the walnut tree.

We then started landscaping right at the end with the white garden, working our way steadily back up to the house.

October 2018 – The Grassy Borders

By October 2018 phase one of the house extension was complete and allowed us to construct a raised Mediterranean bed, complete with olive tree.

We also put two low borders in, as I wanted to have flowers between the patio and the kitchen garden.

Although the borders do have flowers in, they are mainly grass beds. This is after discovering the marvellous grass Calamagrostis × acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’. A neighbour have given me a clump when he had split his own. I was thrilled to have found a grass that stays upright and visualised it creating a net curtain effect between the patio and kitchen garden.

‘Karl Foerster’ Freshly grown in early summer

2019 February – The Plunge Pool

With the grass beds finished there was a pause for winter, then one little job before we could start on concreting the patio, the water feature.

It was to be at the corner of the L-shaped patio. I imagined standing at the kitchen window looking at the flowers in the magnolia border reflected in the water.

I envisioned a shallow rectangle, but my husband had his own ideas, and it’s turned into a plunge pool!

Having already mentioned our extremely stony ground in gardening on an ice-age glazier, you can imagine the task ahead of us!

As we dug deeper the ground became so sandy and stony that the sides started to collapse.

For safety, we had to construct a shuttering box to work inside. As we dug the bottom, the box dropped down until we’d achieved the desired depth.

We concreted the bottom and built the sides out of large hollow concrete blocks, filling them with re-enforcing and concrete.

Just in case our cats or any wildlife accidentally fell in, we created steps at the one end, so that they could get out. I did include drunk guests as another reason!

We topped it off with a few layers of bricks. It then got covered up, and that is as far as it’s got so far.

The main thing, is it allowed us to finally finish the patio. Well most of it…

2019 May – Putting down the Patio

It was easier to do this area in strips, as we needed to keep the level correct.

As with the pizza patio, we put crush and run down and concreted over it.

We now had to wait for phase two of the extension to be finished before the patio could be completed.

July 2021

Work on the house is now underway, meaning that the pizza patio now resembles a builders yard! So we have retreated to the olive patio until work is complete.