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6 simple and effective budget-friendly ideas on how you can freshen up your garden and outdoor living space.
How do our composite decking boards look 5 years after installation in our wet UK garden?
A simple reuse and recycle DIY - see how I create this potting table from a delivery crate!
Refresh your outside space this summer with my round-up of the best garden lounge chairs, rockers and recliners…
My house needed a facelift. Lots of bad British weather, a leaky gutter and rotting windows were just not doing this beautiful Georgian building any justice. A priority was sorting out the front door. Placed perfectly in the centre of the symmetrical exterior, the front door is the focal point when you look at my house from the street. Having not been touched in well over 5 years, the door was faded and cracked. While the conservative, Oxford blue that it once was didn’t give me any pangs of excitement when I looked at it.
For the past two days I have been in attendance at the Chelsea Flower Show: the world-renowned, quintessentially British, annual celebration of all things horticultural. It has been a delight. As a lover of colour and a pretty flower, there is nowhere better to soak-up a sunshine filled day. The show is also attended by the creative elite - from interior and furniture designers to actors and musicians - the show provides incredible inspiration and sows the seed (if you will) to many new designs and ideas. This year there were a few key themes, messages and colours which I think will infiltrate the way we design and style our homes, plus affect the purchases we make.
So, our new composite deck is complete! Landscapers The Greenkeeper spent two weeks dismantling our rotten timber deck, building new framework and installing Trex deck boards and accompanying railing. If you missed the big reveal then you can find it here. If you want to see the build process then click here. Otherwise, I spent a lot of time chatting to The Greenkeeper during the deck build and it was a real eye-opener to how the innovative product of composite deck is revolutionising our exteriors. With its zero-maintenance appeal and eco-credentials, it is the perfect product for the time-poor consumer who would prefer to invest in sustainable materials within their home. I thought it would be interesting to do a Q&A with The Greenkeeper to find out all about how they came to be Trex Pro installers, and why they think that Trex is the future of decking, especially in the UK....
I am SO excited to finally reveal on the blog my brand new decking area, made from Trex Transcend Composite Decking and Trex Signature Railings. If you’ve been following our garden overhaul progress you will have seen why I had given up on our traditional timber deck, as well as a progress report of the build. This post is all about how the finished decking area now looks and how I have styled it so it is perfect for alfresco dinners and summer parties. So, without further delay, here are all the final photos of my finished raised decking area in my garden. As you can imagine, I am delighted with how it has turned out!
The garden trends that you need to know about!